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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
PRINCETON, N. J. 


PRESENTED BY 


The teats eee Nace, a ge New Churel 


BX 8714 .W8 1926 

Wunsch, William Frederic, 
1882- 

An outline of New-church 
teaching 


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An Outline of 
New-Church Teaching 


WITH 





Wilidsimatisave Standard Passages 


BY 


WILLIAM F.“WUNSCH 


Professor of Theology 
New-Church Theological School, Cambridge, Mass, 


Slap a Hee N Hea VWVo~ Gs Hat Re Cer ae RRO Ses 


NEW YORK 


CoryricuT, 1926, By 
THE NEW-CHURCH BOARD OF PUBLICATION 





Printed in the United States of America 


TO MY FATHER 


WHO, FROM A YOUNG MAN, HAS BEEN 
SELF-SACRIFICINGLY DEVOTED TO 
THIS TEACHING, 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/outlineofnewchurOOwuns 


PR Ase ety 


This book is meant to serve as an introduction to the 
teaching of the New Church, especially in Young People’s 
Reading Circles, and in other classes. 

It falls into two parts. Part I. outlines the teaching 
and gives questions and Scriptures on it. Part II. con- 
sists of illustrative standard passages from the Theologi- 
cal Works of Swedenborg, to be studied progressively 
with Part I. In this way the reader gets a general state- 
ment of the teaching in language free from technical 
terms, or explanatory of them; and at the same time be- 
comes acquainted with the text of Swedenborg. 

A class meeting once a fortnight would study on an 
average seven sections of the Outline, together with the 
Scriptures and Excerpts referred to, to complete the book 
in a season. 

This ‘Outline’? was done not without certain strong 
suppositions on the part of the writer. He feels that 
young people are interested in a religious teaching such 
as that of the New Church which has to do so emphati- 
cally with life here. It also has substance. And it knows 
its own mind. Decisiveness, content and useableness, it 
seems to him, a religious teaching must have to meet 
youthful inquiry. Nor will the challenge of this teaching 
to a new Christian day go without response in the idealism 
and spirit of high adventure in youth. 


Cambridge, Mass., W.F. W. 
October Ist, 1926. 


Vil 


Dele Ona: ONO Ness 


Abbreviations Used 
Introduction 
ARRANGEMENT OF THE Urine: 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 


Preliminary: the Being called on to live the Spiritual 
Life ; 
DISTINCTIONS AND RELATIONS 
LARGE ELEMENTS 
Faith 
Charity : 
How THE arena: Bae IS GGonieas 
Conditions in which the Call to it finds us 
A Re-birth Called for 
General Features of Regeneration 
The Course of Regeneration 
The Outcome : : ; 
REALIZATIONS OF THE Siasatye? er LARGER AND 
LESSER ; i : 
THE GOAL OF THE Setane nee THE SPIRITUAL 
Wor.Lp 
Introductory 
Entrance, and the Entry: into a he (Outer World 
Hell 
Heaven 
Influence of the Othe Weal ee Gonmiunietion oats 
it 
1X 


= CONTENTS 


THE WORD 


Introductory 
REVELATION 
Tur Nature OF THE WORD 
SCRIPTURES, AND THE WorpD 
SCRIPTURE, OR THE SENSE OF THE bone 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE OF SCRIPTURE : 
INTER-RELATIONS, SCRIPTURES, AND THE Worp 
How THE Worp was GIVEN 
How THE Worp SERVES 
THE Lorp THE Worp 


THE LORD 


The Idea of God 
Gop, More as HE Is IN HIMSELF 
Creation 
Providence 
Gop MANIFEST: THE on THE Pe 
Incarnation ; : 
The Work of Redemption 
‘The Person of the Redeemer 
The Change called ‘Glorification’ 
INVISIBLE Gop IN VISIBLE . 
Tue Hoty Spirit 
The Activity of the Spirit 
THE TRINITY : 
REVIEW 


PAR Tall 


EXCERPTS FROM THE IT HEOLOGICAL WorKS 
INDEX OF DEFINITION AND COMMENT 


PAGE 
69 
69 
12 
74 
76 
78 
88 
91 
95 
ao 


105 
109 
112 
Lis 
120 
120 
124 
129 
a 
139 
140 
143 
144 
148 


lies: 
259 


ABBREVIATIONS 
Used in references to the Theological Works 


A.—means Swedenborg’s “Arcana Coelestia” 

B.—his “Brief Exposition” 

C.—the “Doctrine of Charity” 

Can.—‘‘Canons” 

Coro.—‘‘Coronis”’ 

E.—the “Apocalypse Explained”’ 

F.—the “Doctrine of Faith” 

H.—‘‘Heaven and Hell” 

J.—“The Last Judgment” 

L.—the “Doctrine of the Lord” 

Life—the “Doctrine of Life” 

M.—“Marriage Love’ (also entitled “Conjugial Love’’) 
N.—‘“The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine” 
P.—“Divine Providence” 

Q.—“Nine Questions” 

R.—‘‘Apocalypse Revealed”’ 

S.—‘Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture” 

T.—“True Christian Religion” 

W.—‘‘Divine Love and Wisdom’’ 


D.L. and D.W. are treatises on “Divine Love” and 
“Divine Wisdom”’ to be found in the last volume of FE. 


XI 










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PART I 





AN OUTLINE OF 
NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


INTRODUCTION 


1. A Premise. The Lord’s Return to Men. The 
teaching of the New Church assumes and declares that 
the Lord has come again. The boldness and the wonder 
of this announcement are appreciated. The serious 
Christian will want to examine carefully into the truth of 
the statement. At present, however, we are only noting 
the fact that the teaching of the New Church assumes 
that the Lord has come again. Indeed, it can think of 
itself only as given by the Lord in His Second Coming. 
When the Lord came the first time, in a physical presence 
with men, He came bringing life more abundantly (John 
x.10), and teaching that life. To-day, too, when, as this 
teaching says, He comes ‘“‘in spirit,’? He comes reviving 
the spiritual life, and offering a better understanding of 
it. Three things may be said to make up the Second 
Coming. 1. In the other world the Lord has inspired a 
fuller realization of the Christian life. 2. He is moving 
to the revival of that life here. These are not as plain 
ways as the third in which He has come. 3. He has also 
poured out on men’s minds for religious inquiry and need 
an abundance of truth from His Word. This He has done 
through a servant, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). 
In Swedenborg’s Theological Works the Word is opened 
in a deeper meaning than has yet been found in it, and 
taught anew in doctrines drawn from its plain teachings. 
This disclosure of the Lord’s mind and revelation of 
Himself is a third and the most tangible phase of His 

3 


4 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Return. At the heart, therefore, of the teaching of which 
an outline is to be attempted, there lives the conviction 
that the Lord has come again, and in no queer way, but 
in a way quite needed and helpful. Many observers feel 
that Christendom and Christianity are undergoing critical 
changes, and are in need of guidance and light and indeed 
of the Lord Himself. ‘This teaching says that the guid- 
ance and light are at hand. It declares that the epochal 
changes in Christendom have a glorious meaning, namely, 
that the Lord Himself is leading to a new Christian era. 

The teaching “for a new Church,” then, has for its 
constant premise and for its origin the stirring fact that 
the Lord has come again. 7 


Consider the Lord’s prediction that He would come again. The 
connected discourse on the subject is Mark xiii (and the equiva- 
lent chapters in Matthew (xxiv) and Luke (parts of xvii, xviii and 
xxl.) Consider that the Lord Himself thought of an end to the ~ 
first Christian era (Matthew xxviii.20) ; also that He connected 
His Return with the end of an age (Mark xiii). 


Study in Part II. Excerpts nn. 1-4. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What event is constantly taken for fact in the teaching? 

2. How will you expect it to be established that the Second 
Coming is fact? Must the message itself bear out the story of 
its origin? 

3. In what three ways does the teaching lead us to see the 
Lord returning? 


2. A Second Governing Idea. The Spiritual World. 
One can not go far in the teaching of the New Church 
without seeing that it thinks of itself as given by the Lord 
in His Second Coming. A second reflection soon comes. 
Everywhere the teaching takes for granted the existence, 
reality and importance of ‘‘the other world,” or the 
world other than that of which our senses tell us—the 
world of spirit. That world is not a subject of hope to 
it only, but a present reality. Swedenborg, by whom the 
teaching was given, says that he was permitted to step 


INTRODUCTION 5 


into the spiritual world and live in it, as men and women 
are living in it who have entered it by the usual gate of 
death and resurrection. One hears in the teaching, there- 
fore, no speculation about the other world, but positive 
report on it, and matter-of-fact references to it. Nor 
does that world only exist for the teaching; it is per- 
petually thought with. It is reckoned with on any and 
every subject. Any world of the spirit les between us, 
as it were, in our consciousness here, and the Infinite 
Being. An incarnation of the Divine would take place 
down across the world of spirit (Matthew 1.18 on; Luke 
ii.8-14). Any Word which God speaks He will speak 
by way of the higher world. Each of us, in his existence 
here, is living in the world of the spirit, too, though 
unaware of it as such. It is impossible then to account 
for the kind of creature the human being is, or the kind 
of book the Bible is, or the kind of process the incarnation 
was, without thinking about and with the spiritual world. 

The teaching ‘‘for a new Church,” we shall soon dis- 
cover, seriously employs an informed thought about the 
spiritual world. 


Study in Part II. Excerpts nn.4, 5 and 6. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How do you account for the positive kind of statement in the 
teaching of the New Church on the subject of the other world? 

2. Besides telling about it, how else does the teaching concern 
itself with the other world? Illustrate. 


ARRANGEMENT OF THE OUTLINE 


3. We bring this outline of New-Church teaching to- 
gether under three main heads. Religion, to that teach- 
ing, is always a way of life, which it likes * to call the 
spiritual life. We make this life our first study. One 
learns of the spiritual life from the Word; if one knows 
anything of that life, the Word has spoken to him in 


* See note to § 13. 





6 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


some way. The Word will be our second study. For the 
actual gift of the spiritual life one looks to the Lord; it 
comes as we follow Him. ‘This simple enough reflection 
gives us our main headings: I. The Spiritual Life (§§ 4- 
60). Il. The Word (§§ 61-93). III. The Lord (8§ 94- 
137). 


Study Part II. Excerpt n.7. 
QUESTION: 


1. How do you relate in thought the three headings of the 
outline? 





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Preliminary 


4. Before we ask what the teaching of the New 
Church tells us of the spiritual life itself, we shall do well 
to inquire how it thinks of the human being who is called 
on to live that life. How is he fitted by nature and 
endowment for a life higher than that which this world 
alone would put before him? 


5. The Relation of the Human Being to Life. All 
life comes to us, and is made over to us, out of the great 
source of life, Infinite Being. We do not live of our- 
selves. Yet we have our lives to live, ourselves. We are 
at one and the same time dependent creatures, and crea- 
tures responsible for exerting our powers and exerting 
them rightly, and among these whatever abilities we have 
for the spiritual life. Both these sides of our essential 
nature the teaching of the New Church brings together in 
one pithy term. ‘The human being, it says, is ‘a recep- 
tacle of life.’ He is not life, but an organism receiving 
life from the one Being Who lives of Himself. But this 
“receiving” means the exercise of powers; it means men- 
tal grasp, exertion of will, action. Life is received only 
in some growth. Two principal powers of reception 
underlie all our life. One i is the power to see what is good 
and true in life (called “rationality” in the Theological 
Works) ; and the other is the ability to purpose and em- 
body in oneself something of what is good and true 
(called “liberty” in our excerpts). Jnmostly the human 
being as “‘a receptacle of life’ is precisely these two 
capacities. Deep in him his own life takes as its first form 
these two powers of re-action to life. 

9 


10 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Consider on our dependence on the Lord for life such Scriptures 
as the Lord’s saying about Vine and branches (John xv); or on 
our self-activity the implications in the picture of the Lord standing 
at the door, and knocking (Revelation iii.20). Find other Scrip- 
tures on the two points. 


Study Part II. Excerpts nn.8-10. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. In what deep respect is man a dependent creature? 
2. How does he “receive” life? 
3. What two capacities are-at the core of his human existence? 


4. What are these two capacities called in the Theological 
Works? 


6. The Human Spirit: Inner and Outer. The human 
being is at the least an organism with a physical life, 
graced by moral and spiritual attainment, however fleet- 
ing. In religion’s view, however, he is primarily and 
definitely a being of mind, aspiration, faith and love, or a 
spirit. This view is common to Christian thought. Man 
is spirit and body. Positive and unique in the teaching of 
the New Church is the thought that spirit is itself a living 
organism, endowed really, for instance, with those powers 
of sensation which eye and ear only exercise from it. 
Thought, love, insight, and purpose, in this view, have 
substance, or are the activity of a substantial organism. 
They make the spirit. ‘They are the man himself. He 
is a spirit, and has a body. Inmostly in his spirit, as we 
said (§ 5), are powers of seeing and incarnating the good 
and the true in life. But aside from this the spirit is 
again inner and outer. It is capable of reckoning with 
values which belong in an inward or enduring spiritual 
world. It is also busied with the circumstances and inter- 
ests of the passing world of material or bodily existence. 
The this-world consciousness is called the ‘‘external man’”’ 
in our excerpts; the mind which one has for the world 
other than that of nature “the internal man.” We need 
to bring together these items in our idea of how the 
human being is constituted. Besides seeing that inmostly 
in the spirit are the two powers spoken of at § 5, we need 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 11 


to appreciate that the spirit is further distinguishable as 
inner and outer. ‘The body in this view is an ‘‘added 
external.” The teaching of the New Church is always 
thinking of the constitution of the human being in this 
way. 


Study Excerpts nn.11, 12, 13. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What is “the spirit” like? 

2. How can it be thought of as inner and outer? 

3. Are we to take “external man” to refer to the body, or to 
the spirit, when we come on the term in the teaching? 


7. Two Ways of Life Open to Us. We will appre- 
ciate a consequence from the fact that there is in each of 
us a mind for life in this world, and a mind for the world 
of the spirit; a “this-world consciousness,’ and a mind 
which grasps the values of an enduring spiritual world. 
It becomes plain that there are two developments of life 
possible to us here, then. We can live life in the terms of 
our present and “natural” existence. Or the higher mind 
in us (without our entering on it actively as we shall here- 
after) can influence our this-world consciousness and give 
it objectives and motives which are “not of the world.” 
In the former case, we may grow physically and mentally, 
morally, too, but not in the life called spiritual. In the 
other case, we add a distinct growth of the spirit which 
gives quality to all the other existence. We grow in the 
life of this world, but in the life eternal, too. We experi- 
ence a spiritual and natural development, or, strictly, a 
spiritual-natural development. ‘“‘Spiritual man’ and 
‘natural man” in the teaching of the New Church are 
these two developments. In each development both 
‘internal’ and “‘external man” (§ 6) participate, but with 
a difference. Where a man sees any spiritual growth, it is 
with all his personality. Where the higher capacities in 
him, however, and sensitiveness to the values of a spirit- 
ual world, are unawakened, and wither in no confidence 
in their reality, he confines himself to a natural growth, in 


12 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


which he is aware as realities only of his interests and 
the world’s; the deepest thought and desire in him are 
still rightly called ‘‘natural.”’ 


Study Excerpts nn.12, 14. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What two ways of life are opened to us by our very consti- 
tution as human beings? 

2. Does the “inner spirit” take part in living a ‘“‘natural” life? 

3. Can you show that something dies in us when we live only 
the life of this world? 


8. Our Free Moral Agency. What has been said so 
far of the constitution of the human being, begins to imply 
that he is a free moral agent. In the first place, deeply 
buried in his being, is a power of responding for himself 
to life (§ 5). Again, he has a mind for higher values 
than those of this world, as well as a this-world conscious- 
ness; in other words, two ways of life lie open to him, a 
life in and for this world, or a life in this world for goals 
beyond (§ 7). All this means that he can re-act to life 
more or less fully and truly, as he wills. He can live, inter- 
esting himself in what is good and true in life, but doing 
so superficially only, for ends of his own. ‘The freedom to 
live so, cultivating morality, for example, for his stand- 
ing’s sake, is called in the teaching of our excerpts 
“rational freedom.” But he can also thrust back from 
him any conception of life which reckons with more than 
this world, and degrade what is good to some selfish 
satisfaction, or sensuous pleasure. ‘he freedom to live 
so the teaching calls “natural freedom,” or the freedom 
of our natural and undisciplined instincts and desires. 
But then we are just as free to re-act wholeheartedly to 
promptings of love and generosity, and to suggestions of 
a Divine Presence, and to welcome both what seems true 
and what seems good for their own sake, and, it may be 
at times, at the cost of other lesser values. The freedom 
to live so the teaching speaks of as “spiritual freedom.” 
None of these, let us note, is civil or political or other 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 13 


freedom; each is a moral freedom in which, plainly, the 
spirit of every one of us moves. Each man, whatever 
other constraints are on him, of legal right, or of cir- 
cumstances, knows that he is free to address life in any 
one of these three ways. 


Consider that man is addressed throughout the Scriptures as 
though he had freedom of moral agency. What else would be the 
point of any commandment to him? Read Deuteronomy xxx. 
15-19; Joshua xxiv.15; Matthew vi.24; x.41. 


Study Excerpts nn.15, 16, 17. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Show how man’s very constitution gives him moral freedom. 

2. What is the general nature of this freedom? 

3. Give an illustration of each of the three kinds or forms of 
moral freedom named above. 


9, Conscience. We add only one other item in the 
human being’s endowment to live the spiritual life. There 
is in each of us an undefined urging to the life we should 
live. It keeps suggesting our distance from that life, or 
warning of violence to it. Probably no sane person is 
wholly without some sense of some right and wrong. It 
is his spur to moral and spiritual growth. There is-con- 
science where the will or volition joins what a man knows 
of right and wrong. The sense of right and wrong will 
not be formed, it is true, apart from the customs obtaining 
where one grows up, nor apart from one’s training, or 
the standards of one’s community, but it is something in 
itself, an “inner dictate’ on right and wrong. Just be- 
cause it is the will joining forces with what a man knows 
about right and wrong, it will be more reliable as that 
knowledge is more enlightened. It is open to education. 
In this general view of conscience, one of our excerpts 
offers us a classification of consciences. Conscience is true 
conscience, as it is fashioned by insight into life’s meaning; 
spurious, where its purpose is well-meaning, but its work- 
ing unenlightened; and false, where in fact there is no 


\ 


14. AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


conscience, but some misgiving, some remorse, some 
superstitious dread acts much as conscience does, and is 
mistaken for it. ‘This classification itself emphasizes the 
need conscience has for education. ‘The need is still 
greater with a social or a racial conscience (§§ 22, 44) 
than with the individual conscience. But in rudiment a 
conscience is present in every human soul as part of his 
endowment for the spiritual life. 


Consider Psalm Ixxxvi.11 as a prayer for conscience. Is the 
conception of conscience given above to be found in these words of 
the Psalm? Even the thought that conscience will take educating? 
For other apt description of conscience turn to Isaiah xxx.21. 
Does John xvi.2 refer to one of the kinds of conscience in the 
classification given? To which? See also Romans ii.14, 15. 


Study Excerpts nn.18, 19, 20. 
QUESTIONS: 


1, What is conscience? What is the etymological meaning of 
the word? 

2. Study what the excerpt says of true, spurious and false con- 
science, and give an example of each from experience. 

3. Is conscience born in one? Is it affected by customs, etc., 
around one? What enters into the formation of conscience more 
vitally than custom, or any other external influence? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE: IN GENERAL 


10. In General. What, now, is the spiritual life which 
the human being is called on by conscience and profoundly 
fitted by endowment to live? At least it has been indi- 
cated in some of the preceding discussion (§ 7), that the 
spiritual life is not to be opposed to our ordinary or 
natural existence. Nor is it a life apart from that life, 
but to be found in it. Nor again is it a section of our 
ordinary existence, only; it is to be found throughout that 
existence, ideally. In short it is our existence here lived 
ina certain way. It is our whole human life, including all 
our customary activities and interests and pleasures, lived 
with regard to God, i.e., for purposes and in a spirit 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 15 


which can be thought of as coming from Him, and in 
serviceable and just relations to others as our neighbors. 
It is the fulfilment of the two Great Commandments. 


Think over Micah vi.8 as a characterization of the spiritual 
life. Also Luke x.25-28; in further interpretation of the Com- 
mandments, Matthew v.21-26, 43-48; Matthew xix. 16-22. 


Study Excerpt n.21. 
QUESTION: 


1. Put in your own words what the life is which we are called 
~ on to live by conscience and by our moral capacities. 


11. The Spiritual Life and Morality. The spiritual 
life is to be distinguished from some other ways of life 
with which it is likely to be confused; it is also to be 
related to these other ways of life. ‘The spiritual life is 
something more than a moral life. The relations of the 
two are too numerous for consideration here, but at least 
the spiritual life as we know it can never be found except 
in a moral life. But it is that, and more. The ‘‘more”’ 
lies in motive and in conception of life. Its motive is 
some form of regard to God, and the conception of life 
in it an idea of life lived to accomplish a Divine purpose. 
We come to have such a motive, and to form such an idea 
of life only slowly, at the urgency of God Himself, and 
with His help. ‘The spiritual life, in other words, means 
God’s presence, and some communion with Him. The 
moral life, on the other hand, can remain itself with no 
religious sanction for its ethical obligations. It may find 
its guidance as well as its accomplishment in the race’s 
best reason and experience, and in the moral sense of a 
civilization or community. But the spiritual life seeks a 
word of God for guidance, and also looks to its full real- 
ization in a world of its own in His presence. ‘The 
spiritual life, as including but being more than the moral 
life, is sometimes called in the teaching of the New 
Church the spiritual-moral life; the moral life, without 
religious motive and idea, is called the natural moral life. 


16 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Study Excerpts nn.22, 23. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Is morality part of the spiritual life? 
2. Is the spiritual life more than morality? In what ways? 


12. The Spiritual Life and the Good Disposition. 
It also helps to see more clearly what the spiritual life is 
to distinguish it from the good disposition or good nature 
which sometimes obscures the need of something more, 
and the possibility of something more. It is the super- 
naturalness of the spiritual life which is emphasized when 
we distinguish it from the naturally gentle and generous 
or altruistic spirit. Into more than the latter no one is 
born. The spiritual character and life is for each person 
an individual achievement. It is the outcome of his own 
high choice and a relation into which he brings his life 
with the Lord, or, more deeply considered, which the 
Lord establishes afresh with each man. There are other 
differences to notice. ‘The spiritual life becomes a tried 
character, with a conscientious principle at its heart; the 
‘good disposition” is not assured on principle. ‘The 
former is deliberately built on the rock of truth; the latter 
has the shifting sands of impulse to rest on. Again, 
‘natural goodness” so-called, as for example an heredi- 
tary generosity of disposition, is easily misled, and im- 
posed upon. Insight is needed to guide it, and principle 
to give it stability. But this insight is insight into our 
relations with truth and with others, and immediately 
begins to transform ‘natural goodness” into spiritual 
character. 


Take account of the Lord’s words to Nicodemus, John ii.3, 5-6. 
Find other Scripture to the point. 


Study Excerpts nn.24, 25; 18. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What more is the spiritual life than well-intentioned dis- 
position ? 
2. What differences between the two can you urge? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 17 


13. The Spiritual Life and the Conventional Re- 
ligious Life. The religious life, which we have been 
calling the spiritual life*, is often confused with the whole 
of what we may call “church life.” Bible reading, formal 
prayer, personal devoutness, church-going, ‘church 
work,” have too often been taken to be the religious life. 
It becomes the tendency of the identification of the spirit- 
ual life with ‘the life of piety’ to take us “‘out of the 
world.” ‘The religious life is made to look like one of 
retreat from the life and work of the world, or at least a 
life apart from that life and work. No teaching more 
than that of the New Church has sent the human being 
into the world and the performance of its work for his 
highest growth, and for his very regeneration. Accord- 
ing to that teaching, as we shall see more fully in a 
moment (§ 19), the spiritual life is to be sought and 
achieved in the daily work and in the industry, education, 
art and government of human society. That life the 
teaching refers to as “‘the life of charity,” while it calls 
the life of religious observances “‘the life of piety.’ But 
while the spiritual life is lived primarily in the active and 
habitual interests and occupations of the world, it is 
served, as by nothing else, by our church-life. Acquain- 
tance with the Bible, prayer, worship, religious education, 
are ways of aspiring to the spiritual life, of bringing it 
into view, and of strengthening us in it (§ 45). 


Consider on the distinction between the life of religion and the 
observances of religion: 1 Samuel xv.22; Amos v.21-24; Micah 
vi.6-8; Matthew xxiii.23, 24. 


Study Excerpts nn.26, 27. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. How does “‘the life of piety” help to the spiritual life ? 
2. What more is the spiritual life than the “church life’ ? 
3. Say again what the spiritual life is (referring to § 10). 





* The teaching of the New Church prefers the term “the spiritual life” 
to the term “the religious life” for the reason, among others, that the 
latter term has meant piety simply, or the church life. 


i8 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE: ITs GREAT ELEMENTS 


14. Two Chief Elements of the Spiritual Life. We 
have described the spiritual life in a general way (§ 10), 
and helped ourselves to see it more clearly by distinguish- 
ing it from some other ways of living (§§ 11-13). We 
need to look at it more closely, and as an inner experience. 
If we examine it as it has been realized at any time, it 
has two main elements in it. Any one who lives it is 
doing something to lay hold on it, by forming some idea 
of it, by aspiring to it, and by trusting himself to it. This 
attitude is faith. But with this attitude, when it is really 
taken, there goes not only a resolve to live the spiritual 
life, but some affection for this way of life, and some 
effort to embody its spirit in us and live it out. This 
whole desire and effort the teaching of the New Church 
calls ‘‘charity’—for that word is used with this unusual 
meaning in the Theological Works. 

Both faith and charity will bear closer study. 


Study Excerpt n. 28: 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What two elements are to be found in any spiritual life? 
2. What is each? Do not simply name each; try to say what in 
experience each is, 


FAITH 


15. What Faith Is. Faith is something more than 
belief, and of course than knowledge. ‘There will be 
information at the roots of faith, and conviction to give 
it body, and insight for it to feed by, still it is more than 
these. In faith one commits oneself trustfully to some- 
thing or some One. Faith stakes a life that God is, or 
that there is an immortal goal to strike for. If one has 
faith, he is ready and resolved to live up to a truth, or to 
follow a Leader. The will enters into faith. All of the 
excerpts are interesting on this point, but one is especially 
significant. “Faith is internal acknowledgment of truth.” 
That is, it is more than knowledge, and more than mental 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 19 


acknowledgment or assent or belief. The heart’s assent 
or the will’s concurrence is involved, for it is the will 
which is “internal” in the human being. 

Let us say, then, that faith is an attitude of the whole 
man, in which he recognizes the reality of the spiritual 
life and sets himself to seek that life. 


Take cases from the Gospels in which the Lord finds ‘‘faith” 
displayed, and see what it is that He calls faith. Study Matthew 
xv.21-28; ix.20-26; and find other such cases of faith. Con- 
sider James 11.19, 20; Luke vi.46. For what did the disciples 
pray ans they asked the Lord to increase their faith? Luke 
Xvii. 5. 


Study Excerpts nn.29-33. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How is information or knowledge related to faith? 
2. What more is faith even than conviction? 
3. Say in your own words what you take faith to be. 


16. How Faith Forms. Beliefs can be adopted, but 
faith, as we have been defining it, must grow and develop. 
A number of answers could be given to the question how 
faith forms. One would be a psychological description 
of its formation in us. For along with the spiritual life 
in general, faith is the work of the Spirit of the Lord in 
us. The psychology of religious experience has an answer 
to our question (T. 8, 11—Excerpt n. 198). But let us 
ask how faith forms from the point of view of what we 
can do to have it. 

While faith is more than knowledge or belief or even 
conviction, we cannot cut these things away from it. It 
is formed of these things, though it is more than any or 
all of them. Faith is not always proportioned to one’s 
knowledge of things of the spirit; a strong faith, if not 
a rich one, may build on little knowledge of the spiritual 
life and of God, and little or no faith accompany much 
knowledge; but in some knowledge faith must start. It 
will begin with the general report which all religion 
makes that there is a God. It will become more nearly 


20 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


itself when what we hear is true, becomes our own con- 
viction. It will continue to deepen and strengthen as we 
grasp the truth more clearly and depend on it more 
entirely. 


Consider the superstitious form which the woman’s reliance on 
the Lord took, at first, who thought that touching the hem of His 
garment would help her (Matthew ix.20-26) ; also the progress 
of the Samaritans in their confidence in the Lord from hearsay to 


first-hand experience (John iv.39-42). 
Study Excerpts nn.34-36. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. In what view are we asking at present how faith forms? 

2. So viewed, how does it forms? 

3. Relate knowledge to faith again, more fully than § 15 
enabled you to do. 


17. The Personal Object of Faith. Faith is an attt- 
tude taken to truth, but truth is always personal, is it not? 
‘That is, it is to be found in an intelligence, and in the 
mind, and at length the object of faith must be He Who 
is “the Truth.” Faith is the committing of one’s life to 
God’s leading. It is trusting to Him. It is a confidence 
of person in Person. ‘To the Christian this confidence is 
at its full when it is rested in Him in Whose Person God 
has been most fully revealed. Christian faith is in the 
Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ. A second reason 
may be given here why faith is at its full when rested in 
God as we know Him in Christ. Faith then not only has 
the insight that God is, but the sight of Him, in Gospels 
and Revelation, as He stood forth in human life and his- 
tory, and continues a present Saviour. ‘There will be 
more to say (§ 128) of this great, satisfying fact that 
faith has an actual sight of God in Christ. 


Study the opening verses of John xiv, more especially 1, 6 and 9. 
Also Colossians 11.9, 1 John i., especially verse 2; John i. 14. 


Study Excerpts nn.3/7, 38. 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 21 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why has faith a personal Object? Give reasons in addition 
to the one given above. 

2. Give at least two reasons why Christian faith is at the full 
when it is centered in the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ. 


CHARITY 


18. What Charity Is. With faith there is invariably 
joined in the spiritual life “charity.” 

Faith is more a laying hold on the spiritual life; char- 
ity, a giving of it out. Being spent for others, that life 
starts in a distinterested desire to live serviceably. ‘This 
desire is what the teaching of the New Church means, 
essentially, by “charity.” Much more is finally to be 
included under the name (§ 19e), but at heart charity is 
this being affected with the purpose to be useful, and 
without calculation of a return. It is itself part of the 
spirit of the regenerate life, and can, indeed, with faith 
be said to constitute that life, but it can be singled out as 
the increasingly pure desire to live serviceably. In this 
respect it is a disposition of the heart as faith is an atti- 
tude which has its formulation in the mind. In either 
attitude the whole man is active, though it is possible to 
say that in the attitude of faith mental activity is more 
prominent, and in that of charity one’s purposes and will 
are more conspicuous. 


Consider as Scripture statements of ‘‘charity” Maiihee 
v.46-48; x.4, 42; xxv.14-30; xxv.31-46; and, of course, the 


second Great Commandment. 
Study Excerpts nn.39, 40. — 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What is charity, as meant in the Theological Works? 

2. It is the whole man who has faith, and who shows charity; 
what then does it mean to speak of faith as belonging more to the 
“understanding,” charity to the “will”? 

3. (For discussion): Is a desire to know truth for its own 
sake included in “charity”? Why? Cf. Excerpt n.30. 


22 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


19. The Chief Expression of Charity. The desire to 
live so that one shall help and not harm his fellow man 
has its main opportunity for expression in the work to 
which one puts his hand. His work is what he is skilled 
to do; in doing it he is most constantly active; it repre- 
sents an interchange of mutually wanted values; it can be 
made the medium of the spirit of service; nowhere else in 
one’s life has the desire to be of solid account more scope 
or a better chance of effectiveness than here. Beginning 
with the very choice of a-.life-work and going on to the 
development of the whole personality in it, charity, as 
the desire to live with the highest and fullest usefulness, 
has its chief expresssion in a man’s usual livelihood. Re- 
call that by our definition of the spiritual life (§ 10) 
we were taken for our full life into the world, and into 
the transaction of our work in the world. Faith brings 
into the world the realities of the unseen world and gives 
us a transforming touch with God; charity bears the inner 
life out to become fact in a usefulness, justice and neigh- 
borly spirit in the world around us. One’s work, and the 
worker himself, become embodiments of charity. 

We may say, then, that charity is one’s work done with 
the purpose to promote in it a common good in realization 
of the Divine will. 


Consider on the main-expression of charity John Baptist’s replies 
to questions (Luke ii.13, 14) ; Zaccheus’s resolve under the influ- 
ence of the Lord’s presence (Luke xix.8-10) ; the fact that ordi- 
nary and necessary activities of civilization are named in Matthew 
xxv.31-46; the general social goal named in Revelation xi. 15. 


Study Excerpts nn.41-43. 
OUESTIONS: 

1. What is charity’s main opportunity for expression? 

2. Why? 

3. What of the influence of a personality, often its finest serv- 
ice, apart from the specific life-work? Or from “things done’? 

4. Is charity true ambition? Mark ix.33-37; x.35-45. 


5. (For discussion): Is charity as described above a layman’s 
real “church work’? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Zo 


20. Other Expressions of Charity. ‘To the main ex- 
pression of charity in the life-work and the personal influ- 
ence, the teaching of the New Church relates other rela- 
tively incidental expressions: 

a) There is the whole of a life’s beneficences done “‘by 
the way.” Many a life is extremely helpful apart from 
its main occupation. Religion insists that there is no 
redeeming the absence of honesty, justice and neighborly 
spirit from one’s work in life by any number of benef- 
cences; these can be further expressions only of a charity 
which has its main expression in the vocation. Present 
there, however, will not charity overflow? 

b) We have already related to ‘“‘the life of charity” 
‘the life of piety” (§ 13). This is largely the relation 
of the whole of the ecclesiastical world to the world’s 
work and life in general. Our active and established 
spiritual life is to be found in the work and civilization 
of the world; ecclesiastical institution and observance 
grow out of that life, and in turn proclaim it, urge to it, 
and help cultivate it (cf. § 45). 

c) The teaching of the New Church also relates 
“charity” to the realm of legal and other obligations. If 
he is a man of religion, the citizen takes a conscientious 
view of citizenship, law and patriotic duty which other- 
wise he would not take. 

d) The world of recreation has its relation to our 
essential or spiritual well-being. If one’s work is an ex- 
pression of charity, recreation will be in part the recrea- 
tion of the desire to live serviceably, or be “‘a diversion of 
charity.” Our pleasures, conversely, will find themselves 
wisely chosen and filled with a right spirit. 

Note how these distinctions serve to relate religion to 
all our life. 


Consider in connection with (a) Mark xii.41-44, John xii. 1-8; 
(b) Samuel xv.22 and Micah vi.6-8; (c) Luke iti. 12-14; (d) 
Psalm xvi. 1le. 


Study Excerpts nn.44-48. 


24. AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


QUESTIONS: 

1. When are “charities” a part of the spiritual life? 

2. How does religion touch obedience to civil law? 

3. What amusements can keep the spiritual life company ? 

4. (For discussion): When “giving help” is systematized and 
itself a life-work, like Red Cross work for some, is it a ““benefac- 
tion” or a “main expression of charity’? 


21. Charity’s Object the Neighbor. As the disin- 
terested desire to live serviceably, charity has for its 
object those whom it can serve. But it looks out in them 
what can serviceably be promoted by it. It is intent on 
discovering what good it can help forward. Everywhere 
good, in the sense of right and well-being, from the 
lowest physical and material up to the highest moral and 
spiritual welfare, is its object. Its vision is by no means 
on the abstract. As a matter of practice it finds what it 
means to put forward being worked for by another, or 
even embodied in some other person, or represented in 
some movement or institution. [hat person or that 
institution becomes the neighbor. Charity is impersonal 
in that it is bent on promoting moral integrity, right, 
mercy, justice, and no individual or group of men irrespec- 
tive of their possession of charity themselves. But there 
is no influence in human life so bent on giving others their 
best opportunity, on understanding them, on making a 
way for them, and on giving effect to each personality’s 
endowments and best efforts. Tolerance, active sym- 
pathy, loyalty, principled friendship, a reflecting patrio- 
tism, all the “personal” attachments, go with charity. 


Consider the primary point of the Parable of the Good Samari- 
tan (Luke x.30-35), that there is no limit on charity; also the 
conception of the neighbor put forward there—the man who him- 
self stands for helpfulness. 


Study Excerpts nn.49, 50, 51. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. On what is charity’s vision fixed? 
2. Is charity impersonal? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 25 


3. Who is the neighbor according to the Parable of the Good 
Samaritan? 


22. Charity’s Neighbor: Individual and Collective. 
Instinctively men have put the country far above any 
individual’s fortunes, and in a less degree regarded the 
family, too, as having claims superior to those of any 
one member of it. The teaching offered the world now 
for its guidance would make this instinctive recogni- 
tion of higher neighbors than the individual an explicit 
understanding. It justifies and emphasizes the con- 
sciousness of “larger neighbors,’ and would educate 
it. If charity is concerned to forward the good and the 
true in life, it is more ardently and more largely concerned 
to forward them where a group achieves them more 
largely than an individual would. The teaching of the 
New Church bases a social Gospel on an extended applica- 
tion of the second Great Commandment. ‘The neighbor 
may be a group of men, a society, or a nation, as well as 
another individual. The generations to come have ap- 
peared, in many a modern movement like the conservation 
of natural resources, in this commanding position of 
larger neighbor; so has the “tweak nation’’; so has a cause 
of all mankind like international peace. In these larger 
‘“‘soods”’ to which one can give oneself and which are or 
may be inspired by Christian ideals, we have larger real- 
izations of Christian standards and civilization than it is 
open for any one man to effect. 


Consider how our thought of God has enlarged as our knowledge 
of His world has widened; is the neighbor of the second Great 
Commandment also to be conceived on a larger scale as we ap- 
preciate the inter-dependence of great groups in modern civiliza- 
tion? 


Study Excerpts nn.52, 53. 


QUESTIONS: 

1. What neighbors do we begin to appreciate we have beyond 
the individual ? 

2. Why should these be neighbors, too, and religious obligation 
extend to them? 


26 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


23. The Scale of Neighbors. When the question is 
raised how our neighbors, large and small, are to be 
ranked by us in the measure of our obligation to them, 
we are in the region of practical, conscientious judgment. 
They will fall into some scale, but what that is to be for 
any man, must be left probably to all the facts and duties, 
sometimes conflicting, which enter into one’s own situa- 
tion. The general consideration which controls the judg- 
ment is plain enough. ‘The individual neighbor or the 
collective, either, is a neighbor, or is to be so regarded, in 
the degree in which he himself is working for and capable 
of representing a civic or moral or spiritual good. Other 
things equal, the larger and more significant the group, 
and the higher the benefit to come by it, the higher the 
neighbor commanding the loyalty of one’s charity. So the 
teaching of the New Church sketches a scale in general as 
follows: one’s self, as the agent of any service at all; 
another human being; a neighborhood; a city; one’s 
religious body; one’s country; the spiritual welfare and 
life of one’s country; the best interests of all mankind; 
the kingdom of God in the world; the Lord Himself, 
Who seeks the good of all His creatures, whether in- 
dividuals or whole races, and alone finally has the power 
to accomplish it. 


Do the Scriptures anywhere set “larger neighbors” before us? 
In the Prophets does a nation appear as a larger neighbor? For 
what large neighbor did the Lord lay down His life? Consider 
John xi.49-52; xviii. 14. 


Study Excerpts nn.54, 55 (recall 52, 53). 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How, or on what principle, shall we grade our larger neigh- 
bors where any conflict of obligations arises? 

2. Can you cite from experience such a conflict of duties? 

3. (For discussion): ‘The “Church” is a larger neighbor. 
When it is ranked above the country is it one’s own religious body? 
Or is it the spiritual life and light to which the country itself may 
be indebted? Recall that one’s religious body is a creature of the 
law of the country, and an organization within the country. 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 2/7 


24. The Inseparableness of Charity and Faith. In 
summary. Review §§ 14-23. Our definitions of faith 
and charity will have displayed how inseparable these two 
main elements of the spiritual life are. They are the 
two sides of the regenerate character. Where there is no 
purpose to live the spiritual life, one cannot be said to be 
reaching after it, as in faith one is doing presumably; nor 
can this purpose, which is charity, be absent when a man 
is intent, in the attitude we call faith, on the beauty and 
truth and wholesomeness of life as it is lived with regard 
to God and in neighborly relations with others. 

Review §§ 4-13. See how these two phases of the 
spiritual character are the unfolding of man’s twofold 
power of response to life, called ‘‘rationality,’’ and 
PUDELLY:” 

In prospect. We turn next to the question how the 
spiritual life may be attained. That that life is charity 
and faith has a bearing on the question. No way of at- 
taining the spiritual life will be sufficient which does not 
reckon with each of these primary elements in it. The 
attainment of that life cannot turn on believing only, nor 
can it turn on living in a certain way only. Neither can 
it be made to turn on a conduct only, but must look to the 
entrance into the spirit of man of a faith and a charity 
which are from the Lord. 


Find the general thought of § 24 in John xiii.17, Luke vi.46, 


Matthew vii.24 on; John xiv.21; Galatians v.6; Romans x.10. 
Study Excerpts nn.56, 57, 58, 40, 7. 


QUESTIONS: 
Review the Questions of §§ 1-23. 


How THE SPIRITUAL LIFE Is ATTAINED 


25. In General. We might ask how the spiritual life 
is given. As it is more than the loftiest morality (§ 11), 
and is a spirit and energy that enter man only as he lives 
as though there is a God, it is to be had only of God. 


28 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


It is the work of the Divine Spirit, and of the Lord’s 
presence in heart and mind. So regarded, the spiritual 
life is a gift. We shall think of it in this aspect when we 
come to speak of the Holy Spirit, and its activity (§ 133). 

But the spiritual life, which is man’s promised life, is 
in these respects like the promised Land of Canaan; 
Canaan was always spoken of as given to the Jews by 
Jehovah, yet it had to be won by them actively. Our 
true life has likewise to be descried by us, aspired to, pro- 
ceeded to in some knowledge of it, and even fought for. 
It is this measure of our own co-operation to have it which 
we mean to study now; hence the phrasing of our heading. 


Our inquiry has some relations forward in the Outline which 
we might note. ‘The possibility of having the spiritual life at all 
was assured men by the redemption (§ 118), which gave men a 
spiritual environment in which they could seek their right and 
whole life with effect. Again, when we come to consider the 
Word, we shall see how it serves to disclose the spiritual life to us, 
and to stimulate us to it (§§ 61, 88). 


Consider how both aspects of the spiritual life, as gift, and as 
attainment, are reflected in the Rich Young Ruler’s question, 
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Note the wording of 
the formula, “The land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to 
take.’ Find other such Scriptures, which take account of the gift, 
and the attainment, both, which the spiritual life is. 


Study Excerpts nn. 58-60. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. How is the spiritual life a gift? 

2. How an attainment? 

3. (For discussion): Do we need to study gift or attainment 
more? 


CONDITIONS IN WHICH THE CALL To LIFE FINpDs Us 


26. Conditions Affecting the Attainment of the 
Spiritual Life. We gave some thought above (§§ 7-9) 
to endowments and powers which make the human being 
a creature of the spirit, and enable him to have the spir- 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 29 


itual life. When'we consider how he attains this life, 
we have also to know under what conditions he exercises 
those powers. Does he start with no disabilities to hamper 
him? Has he any contrary tendencies to overcome? 
Has he only to order his life aright, or does a disorder 
already mark it which he must do something to set right? 
The teaching of the New Church, taking up these in- 
quiries, has certain general answers to offer. We look at 
three of these answers for a moment, and then take up the 
story of how, in view of the conditions of our life and 
nature, we can hope to gain the spiritual life. 


27. (1) An Instinctive Antagonism to the Spiritual 
Life. At the core of consciousness the teaching of the 
New Church finds a sense of self-guidance which is given 
the human being to make him a free moral agent. ‘This 
sense sets him off from his Maker as an independent 
being in effect, with his life to live himself. It is the mak- 
ing of the individual. The spiritual life, which must be 
chosen freely to be had at all, depends on our having this 
sense of self-guidance and exercising it. Yet this sense 
that we guide ourselves and have our lives to live our- 
selves, can be taken too seriously, and falsely. We can 
take it to stand for the whole reality, and guide our lives 
without reference to a higher guidance. We then make 
the sense of self-guidance the source of irresponsibility to 
God just as it was intended to be the means to self- 
determined responsibility to Him. Does it need any argu- 
ment that, following up their sense of having their lives 
to do with as they chose, men have made this sense re- 
bellious rather than loyal to Divine guidance? It has 
been stamped with materialistic and worldly tendency, as 
men have lived for this world alone; with indifference to 
the laws of the spiritual life, as they have been irreligious ; 
with a tendency to violation of the true order of life, as 
they have denied insight, ignored the truth, and smothered 
conscience. When, then, we come to say how the spiritual 
life is attained, we have to reckon with a natural antag- 
onism to it, which is the impulse of wrong living to protect 


30 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


itself, and yet which has fastened itself on a basic attribute 
of human individuality. Any process of gaining the 
spiritual life must appeal to the sense of self-guidance, 
and at the same time must rid that sense of its instinctive 
antagonism to what seems the giving up of self-guidance 
—the spiritual life in which the Lord is the Leader. 


The term under which the Theological Works speak of this 
sense of self-guidance (and of the false reasoning and the evil 
that grow out of it) is “proprium,” or what is man’s own as over 
against the life which God gives. 


Consider Psalms xii.4, cxix.109; John ii:.19. 
Study Excerpts nn.61, 62. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What ‘‘sense” underlies human self-activity? 

2. With what nature is this “sense” stamped? 

3. In the face of this fact what must be the process of gaining 
the spiritual life? 


28. (2) The Presence of Positive Evil and Falsity 
in Life. The spiritual life meets in us more than instinc- 
tive antagonism to it. The race has seen an active growth 
of evil spirit and purpose. Does it need argument that 
a mass of evil has accumulated in human life? Social in- 
justices and cruelties are this evil written large; gross 
misdoing in the individual, like murder, is only a criminal 
expression of the contempt, cruelty, self-seeking and ir- 
reverence which more subtly fill countless lives. This 
mass of disorder has come down through the generations, 
not lessening on the way. It has its own “body” and is 
fixed in the very way in which society is put together. It 
may set a whole generation or an entire age in a false 
outlook on life, and put it at some vast pernicious work. 
There is a world of moral disorder, evil, and falsity. In 
the individual life tendencies may be inherited and habits 
of thought and act acquired which carry a man, and hold 
him, away from his true self and life. The teaching of 
the New Church does not minimize the existence of evil, 
in the individual life or on a larger scale; or its power of 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 31 


perpetuating itself. To it the set of the spirit is inheri- 
table as much as physical contour is, or a constitutional 
liability. ‘Inherited’ evil, however, of which it speaks, 
is only tendency and weakness; ‘‘actual’’ evil is this 
tendency or some evil or false prompting given way to 
and given effect. Where in addition there is appreciation 
of the violation of true life and Divine intention in evil, 
this evil is ‘‘sin.”’ 

Any process, then, by which we may come to have 
spiritual life, must in part be one of conflict with evil 
and confession of sin. 


Consider Romans vii.18-24; Isaiah i.16, 17; also the negative 
form of the Ten Commandments; John ix.4l1. 


Study Excerpts nn.63-65. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What is “inherited” evil? 

2. What is “‘acquired” or “actual” evil? 

3. What is sin? 

4. What does the presence of evil and falsity in life mean for 
the way in which we can gain the spiritual life? 


29. (3) Lack of Insight into the Spiritual Life. 
Any process by which we reach the spiritual life, must 
also, in large part, be one of enlightenment in it. 

Consider that the moral and spiritual disorder of our 
lives is in itself enough to obscure that life tous. We also 
begin life in an ignorance peculiar to the human being. 
The brute animal soon displays an instinctive knowledge 
of the ways of its existence. Over centuries that knowl- 
edge is a stationary quantity. It is a distinguishing im- 
perfection of the human being that he does not have the 
same instinctive knowledge. His imperfection becomes 
his gain. Instead of being limited to instinct in what he 
may know, he has all knowledge to make his way into. 
Part of his native ignorance is lack of insight into what 
life in its Divinely intended fulness can be. And what he 
needs to move to, let us note, is insight, not simply in- 
formation; for information about the spiritual life may 


32 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


still leave one without a vision of it. Any process, then, 
by which we shall come to have the spiritual life must 
in large part be one of enlightenment in it. 


For Scriptures turn to John i.9, xii.36; Jeremiah x.36; Psalm 


cxix.105; John v.39 (ARV). 
Study Excerpts nn.66, 67. 
QUESTION: 


1. Give reasons why we need the light of religion in order to 
live the whole human life. 


A ReE-BirTH CALLED FoR 


30. Re-birth Called for by the Conditions. Condi- 
tions such as these (§§ 27-29) make it plain that we come 
to live the spiritual life only by a marked change in us. 
A Power above us must lift us out of our instinctive 
antagonism to life from Him (§ 27), give us power over 
evil (§ 28), and enlighten our ignorance (§ 29). ‘The 
change is so radical that men have long called it “re- 
birth.” While that is an old analogy, the teaching of the 
New Church makes it a more forceful comparison than 
ever. If we are born at\the most to a, good nature: 
(§ 12), and if we have a self to let go and another to 
realize (§ 27), and this in a moral struggle which has its 
risk and its birth-pangs (§ 28), and if we have a “new” 
existence to see (§ 39), then reaching the spiritual life 
is like being born again. God becomes our Second 
Parent. Ponder the conditions in which a summons to 
the spiritual life finds us (§§ 27-29). Is not a deep-going 
alteration of spirit and mind alone able to bring us to 
the spiritual life? 


Scriptures: John iii.3, 5-7; 1 Peter 1.22, 23; Ephesians iv.21- 
24; Psalm li.10. 


Study Excerpts nn.68-70; recur to n.25, 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE ag 


QUESTIONS: 


1. How thorough a change do the conditions sketched (§§ 27- 
29) call for if we are to see “eternal life’? 

2. Give reasons for calling this change “re-birth,” or “‘re- 
generation.” 


GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF REGENERATION 


31. Gradual. Before sketching the course of regen- 
eration, we note some things which are true of it gen- 
erally. The generation of the spiritual life in us will be 
gradual, for one thing. It may, to us, begin suddenly. 
It may start in a sudden revulsion against a bad habit, or 
in an overwhelming sense of the Divine activity in the 
world; but its total working cannot be restricted to that 
moment. The analogy of regeneration to birth is limited.* 
The formation of spiritual character goes back to the 
brooding of the Divine spirit over the spirit of man, to 
awaken him to new life; and it continues in a process of 
growth and maturing after re-birth, as after birth. Now, 
consider that the spirit or person to see regeneration, is a 
substantial organism (§ 6). Personality is a life-structure, 
in the conception of the teaching of the New Church. 
That structure has to be fashioned and reformed to re- 
spond readily and strongly to the good and the true in 
life. The re-fashioning can hardly be other than gradual. 


How does Mark iv.26-29 bear on the point of § 31? 
Study Excerpts nn.71, 72. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why must regeneration be gradual? 
2. Can it be said ever to be over with? 


32. From beginnings. Mysterious (John iii.8) as 
the re-making of a human life may be, the adult spiritual 
character has some knowable beginnings. It springs not 

* Like all analogies, this has its limits; we note another at § 33. The 


analogy is really meant to be with the entire coming to be of a life, from 
conception on. 


34 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


from nothing, but from seeds. It is doubtful if there is 
a life in which no idea at all of a Supreme Being has been 
planted (§ 96); or a life which feels no proddings about 
right and wrong; or one wholly unmoved in its tender 
years by pity, or scruple, resentment of injustice, or the 
spirit of fair-play. But these slight stirrings of the spirit 
of the child and of the youth mean something for adult 
character. Like psychology more recently, the teaching 
of the New Church has always recognized that there is 
no movement of life in us which does not enter into the 
sum of personality. It persists in some form, of buried 
instinct, or unappreciated influence, in the structure of 
life. It ‘“‘remains.’’ So the teaching of the New Church 
has called promptings of pity, suggestions of the ex- 
istence of God, which may have visited the early life, 
‘remains’; and thinks of them as seedings from which 
the adult character is eventually grown. Out of them the 
Lord effects the regenerate character and mind. The 
springing of the adult character from such seedings of 
His spirit is one more item in the analogy between gen- 
eration and regeneration. 


Consider the force now of Matthew xviii.3 and context, xix. 13- 
15 Sxviter La: 


Study Excerpts nn.73, 74; cf. n.27. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What preparation is made in a life for regeneration? 
2. Give examples of these beginnings of spiritual character. 


THE GENERAL COURSE OF REGENERATION 


33. The Human Being’s Co-operation. In thinking 
of the general course of regeneration, we shall give atten- 
tion, as we said (§ 25), to the part we have in that su- 
preme concern. [he Lord alone, indeed, regenerates any 
one. And there is a profound story to tell of how the 
regenerate life comes about at His hands, behind and 
above human efforts, and in inspiration of them. That 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 32 


story constitutes the deeper meaning of Scripture (§§ 73, 
74). Into it the human spirit will be penetrating to all 
eternity, and appreciating what the Lord has done for 
it, in the ineffable gift of new life. Into the extent and 
nature of our co-operation with the Lord we need to see 
here and now. 


The Rich Young Ruler’s question is our question: Luke xviii. 


18. 
Study Excerpts nn.75, 76. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What aspect of the course of regeneration are we expecting 
to study? 
2. What deeper study are we not attempting? 


34. Stages in Regeneration. It is easy to make out 
two main stages in the course of regeneration. here is 
the period during which we are holding ourselves up to 
what we have taken to be the standards of Christian life. 
We are seeking to conform ourselves to the truth of the 
spiritual life. We try to think life out along the lines of 
that truth. We keep our deliberate desires to it. This stage 
in our re-fashioning the teaching of the New Church calls 
“reformation”’; it is practically the sum of our co-opera- 
tion toward Christian character. But another follows. We 
come finally into the way of thinking and the way of 
feeling towards which we have conscientiously striven. 
They become a second nature, and a spontaneous life in 
us. We speak of this stage as ensuing. Its connection with 
the former, however, is not in time so much, as it is one 
of inspiration and cause. Behind our conscious effort to 
seek the spiritual life there had been going on all the time 
a deep change in motive and spirit which is the Lord’s 
hidden work in us. This change finally passes out into 
our consciousness in the supremacy of higher motives in 
us (the charity and faith of the spiritual life (§ 14)), 
and what we struggled towards the Lord establishes in 
easy sway of us. ‘This second stage in the course of re- 


36 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


generation is itself called ‘‘regeneration” in distinction 
from reformation. 


There are other discernible stages in regeneration as a whole. 
The deeper meaning of Genesis i, describing the formation of inner 
and outer man (§ 6) under “heaven” and “earth,” as his re-cre- 
ation takes place, and he comes into a new world, gives us seven 
stages, definitely marked off, in the general course of regeneration. 
Here we are carried again more into the story of what takes place 
at the Lord’s hands in our regeneration, than over what man has 
to do toward having the spiritual life (§ 33). 


As references to both the stages of regeneration discussed above 


read John xiv.21, 23, and Matthew xi.28, 29, 30. 
Study Excerpts nn.77, 78. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What is “reformation” as distinguished from “regenera- 
tion’? 

2. Does the one stage actually succeed the other in time? Is 
this the best that can be said of their connection? On this, study 
the second excerpt carefully. 


STEPS AND MEANS TO REGENERATION 


35. Self-examination. The spiritual life comes to one 
only in some vision of what it is (§ 29). It must appear 
and attract. Bringing the spiritual life to a man’s con- 
scious appreciation of it, is the work of the Spirit, in 
its own good time (§ 107). It is the awakening and 
stirring to influence of the seedings of character (§ 32). 
The first active step which man himself takes, follows. 
When the spiritual life does appear to him and move him, 
he has a sense of short-coming. He realizes how much 
of his spirit and life is in contradiction of it. He begins 
to search himself and to name to himself the trait or 
habit which holds him out of more satisfying and truer 
living. He checks up spirit and thinking and behaviour 
by a standard which is God’s urging on him. The Com- 
mandments have long been the manual of self-examina- 
tion. As they are given reference by the Lord to our 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 37 


very motives and desires (Matthew v.21 on), and in the 
deeper sense which is theirs (Excerpt n.183), they still 
afford religious aspiration the most sensitive guidance. 
They set up standards for the spiritual life-to-be. With 
their searching guidance a man can hope to confront his 
misdoing, his ignorance, his sensualism, his unjust spirit, 
his cruel spirit. They will give his self-examination the 
two qualities it must have to be profitable. It must be 
definite. And it must be honest, piercing the disguises and 
‘defense mechanisms” to which self-love resorts. Self- 
examination can be carried to an extreme and become un- 
wholesome introspection; but some scrutiny not only of 
one’s deeds, but also of one’s desires and ways of thought 
any serious religious ideal inevitably inspires. Self- 
examination will follow on insight into the life which is 
everything worth having. 


See how knowledge of the spiritual life impels to self-examina- 
tion in Psalm cxxxix.23, 24; xix.12-14. “The Lord calls to self- 
examination: Matthew xix.16-22; vii.3-5. On the Command- 
ments and self-examination, see Matthew xix.16-22; Psalm xix. 11. 


Study Excerpts nn.79, 80; also “confession of sin” inn.81. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why will some self-examination follow on an appreciation 
of what the spiritual life is? 

2. What guidance is there for this self-examination ? 

3. What two qualities make self-examination useful ? 


36. Repentance. As a matter of fact, self-examina- 
tion is a part of that first step of a man’s own toward the 
spiritual life which is called “repentance.” So the teach- 
ing of the New Church speaks of repentance as ‘‘the 
beginning of the church* with man.” But repentance 
goes beyond self-examination. It includes the action that 
follows on self-examination. When an impossible spirit 
or a false conception of life has been faced, the spirit of 
religion carries us on to avoid it. We mean not to con- 





* On the meaning of the term “church” in Swedenborg see § 45. Here 
plainly it means the realization of the spiritual life. 


38 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


tinue in it. If it persists we can only condemn ourselves 
on account of it. Remaining in it, we are in evil, and, as 
we realize this, and yet continue, we sin. The whole 
attitude and effort to be rid of evil is repentance. ‘The 
genuinely powerful motive in it is the appreciation that 
evil is sin. That motive is a cleansing heat from which 
nothing is hid. It burns out the last self-regard which 
otherwise would live on, as we avoided evil only for our 
standing’s sake, or some lesser motive, which makes no 
clean sweep of it. More nearly than a step in regenera- 
tion, repentance is a persisting attitude in any regenerat- 
ing life. To the imperfect human life, with increasing 
appreciation of goodness, beauty and truth, there is never 
a time when the call may not come, ‘Repent ye, for the 
kingdom of heaven is at hand.” 


The Gospel word for repentance means ‘‘change of mind.” See 
the illustration of this in the active desisting from wrong aroused 


by the Lord in Zaccheus: Luke xix.8. 
Study Excerpt n.81. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What is it to repent? 
2. Is repentance an act or an attitude? 
3. What is the thorough-going motive in repentance? 


37. Prayer. When we come to prayer and moral 
struggle, we are considering not so much steps as means 
to regeneration. 

Prayer, moreover, is a constant feature of the re- 
generating life, once attained, not only a means to it. 
Much might be said of it. Fresh significance is given it 
in the teaching of the New Church, as one realizes that 
the human being is every moment receiving life, not him- 
self a form of life (§ 5), and that the strength and 
depth of his growth depend on the openness he shows to 
the highest influences that can reach him (§ 7). Prayer 
keeps throwing mind and spirit open to these influences. 
This means of course not only formal petitions, but the 
sum of the aspirations which a man entertains. As such, 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE oo 


prayer is a means of reaching to the spiritual life in the 
first place, to get some vision of it, and inviting it. It 
is a means of progress in that life once attained. Indeed, 
without prayer, keeping the spiritual life before us, and 
its standards, and spirit, these turn dim realities, if they 
do not remain unrealities. Especially does prayer serve 
to bring the saving and transforming power of the Lord 
into our lives. Mastery of a wrong spirit or of a dis- 
torted conception of life, without prayer, is a hard and 
meritorious self-mastery; with prayer it becomes the 
gracious work of the Lord Himself, Whose own spirit 1s 
its soul, then. Prayer bears us up above ourselves and 
lets in the life which is life indeed. 


Consider what effect these petitions must have when they are 
actual aspirations of ours: Psalm xxvii.4, cxlili.10, Lxiii, cxxxix. 


21-24. 
Study Excerpts nn.82, 83. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What two means to regeneration are coupled in Excerpt 
n.82? 

2. What conception of the human being gives prayer an obvious 
and vital place in our lives? 

3. What does prayer do for our moral struggles? 


38. Moral Struggle. Prayer lifts one up toward the 
standards and the spirit of the spiritual life. But the 
purpose, or motive, or outlook on life to which we are 
raised in aspiration, we know will have to be worked 
out in thought and practice. Nor shall we expect to do 
this without some struggle against moral inertia, lack of 
sensitiveness to the right, or positive evil habit (§ 28). 
Sometimes this struggle is sharp and hard; sometimes it 
is very little in the conscious notice of the man, consisting 
more in a sort of clarification of his character; yet it 
will be present, an inevitable means, in the thought of 
the New Church, to regeneration. Only an actual inner 
struggle for a standard reduces our sense of self- 
guidance to higher leading (§ 27). It alone serves to 


40 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


fix in us the truth to which we have assented, the good 
to which we aspire. The man that one is meant to be 
arrives only so. ‘The two great conflicting spheres in 
life, of good and evil or of heaven and hell, have caught 
the man up between them, and he begins to count in the 
only way in which a life can count permanently and in 
the world of the spirit. 


No, when the fight begins within himself, 

A man’s worth something. God stoops o’er his head; 

Satan looks up between his feet—both tug— 

He’s left, himself, i? the middle: the soul wakes 

And grows. Prolong that battle through his life. 

Never leave growing till the life to come. 
—Browning. 


Study Matthew x.34, 36; xvi.24-28; Psalm cxliv.1, 2; Revela- 
tion 1i./, 11, ‘etc. 

Study Excerpts nn.84-86; (17—compare with the quotation 
from Browning). 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why will there be moral struggle in the attainment of the 
spiritual life? 

2. What does moral struggle accomplish? 

3. Do you find a thought in common in the last line of the 
quotation from Browning and the last verse of the citation in 
Matthew xvi? 


THE OUTCOME OF REGENERATION 


39. In What Regeneration Results. We indicate 
briefly four results of the regeneration of the human 
being. 

a) In the regenerating man we have no man out of 
touch with the activities and interests of this world (cf. 
§ 10). He seeks to do his utmost in the world’s work 
and life, and yet he is “a new man,” as religion and 
Scripture have long called him. For he conceives exis- 
tence in a new light, which an eternal life throws on it, 
and lives with purposes which an enduring spiritual life 
alone inspires and sustains. 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 41 


b) Again, all the evil in one’s spirit and thought is 
“removed,” in the literal force of that word—‘‘moved 
back.” No one is regenerated to the point where evil in 
some subtler form does not present itself; but evil over- 
come is also only laid inactive. It is removed to inactiv- 
ity in the margin of consciousness, much as the peoples 
of Canaan were pushed by the conquering Israelites to 
the margins of the land. Having been part of one’s life, 
it persists in some inactive form or at least in some mark 
it has made on the structure of life (cf. § 32). But this 
subdual of evil is one of the results of regeneration. 

c) Regeneration also brings a new sense of self- 
guidance. The sense that one lives of oneself and has 
one’s life to guide, is laid under conviction of the Divine 
leadership and is exercised with reference to the Divine 
will. On this Divinely directed sense of self-guidance 
there has built up a character more freely the man’s than 
if he had been a slave to himself. ‘The teaching of the 
New Church speaks of both this responsibly exercised 
sense of self-guidance and the character erected on it as 
a “heavenly proprium”’ (see § 27, foot-note). 

d) A fourth result of regeneration concerns our un- 
seen spiritual association. Every life is one of myriad 
lives in the unseen environment of the world of the 
spirit. As the character of a life here changes, the un- 
seen environment does, to suit and serve it. ‘Lhe re- 
generate man has made his way out of an invisible evil 
company which fed his unregenerate spirit, into the com- 
pany of those who inspire to full and vigorous spiritual 
life. 


Consider Ephesians iv.20-24, Ezekiel xviti.21, 22, Psalm cxix. 
109, xxxiv.7, Psalm i, and Matthew w.11. 


Study Excerpts nn.87-90. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Name four things which regeneration accomplishes. 

2. In what sense can we become “new men’’? 

3. Does regeneration oust from one’s being any evil that ever 
had a root in it? 


42 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


4, What change comes over our feeling that we guide ourselves? 
Do you know of a better illustration than Newman’s hymn, “Lead, 
Kindly Light’? 

5. What change in our unseen environment comes with regen- 
eration ? 


REVIEW AND PROSPECT 


40. We have tried to say briefly, following the teach- 
ing of the New Church, that there is such a life as the 
spiritual life to live (§§ 10-24), how it is to be attained 
(§§ 25-38), and what it means to share it (§ 39). 


Let the student review these sections, going over the questions 
on them. 


We pass to some of the smaller and larger realiza- 
tions of the spiritual life, and then to a consideration of 
the goal of the spiritual life in a world of the spirit. 


REALIZATIONS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 


Individual. Collective. Aids to realization of the 
spiritual life. 


41. In thinking how the spiritual life is attained (§§ 
25-39), we have confined ourselves to the individual’s 
attainment of it. But there are larger realizations of it. 
No human being sees this life in isolation, but along with 
others, and in a movement of the spiritual life in a com- 
munity, whether or not we can hope always to define the 
community. ‘There are also realizations of the spiritual 
life over a period of time, which we call religious eras. 
Once again, ecclesiastical bodies form to seek and have 
and promote this life. It is to be noted that the teaching 
of the New Church groups together all these realizations 
of the spiritual life, whether in an undefinable group, in 
a religious era, in an ecclesiastical body, or in the in- 
dividual experience, calling any of them the “church.” 


QUESTION: 


1. What larger realizations of the spiritual life are there be- 
sides individual regeneration? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 43 


42. Epochal Realizations of the Spiritual Life. The 
teaching of the New Church is full of the assurance that 
the spiritual life never wholly dies away; it rises and . 
falls, and so may be re-established, but it never expires 
altogether. There is always a “church,” the Theological 
Works declare, in their significant use of that word. It 
is like saying that the kingdom of God never wholly fails 
to exist in the world. In their interpretation of the 
religious history of the race, those Works make out five 
epochal realizations of the spiritual life, a most ancient 
(also called Adamic, because told about in the Genesis 
stories of Adam); an ancient (called Noetic, because 
told about in the stories of Noah); the Old Testament 
development of monotheistic religion among the Jews; 
the whole Christian era; and now a fresh Christian 
development to come or “‘new Church” (see § 1). The 
first two developments are fairly pre-historic, although 
the Genesis documents concerning them, and doubtless 
other data, are relics of those periods. In each of the 
four developments which have run their course the 
spiritual life has come to be, flourished, and fallen off, 
and its outcome estimated and laid up in a “‘last judg- 
ment’ (§ 43), in the world of the spirit (§ 115 et 
seqq.). Each of these eras is called by the teaching of 
the New Church a ‘‘church,” for it was a realization of 
the spiritual life over a distinct period and after a special 
type. This synopsis of the race’s spiritual life also 
makes plainer what the teaching means when it says the 
Lord has come again to renew His church (§ 1). It is 
to be noted, too, that this interpretation of the race’s 
religious history is tracing that history at its best in any 
period; to either side of the ridge of the race’s spiritual 
attainment will be other lesser religious developments, 
or other religious life at any rate in the Gentile world 
around. 

Consider the indications that history lay in such epochs in the 
Lord’s own outlook: Luke xvii.20 onward, especially 26; Matthew 
xxvili.20; Matthew v.21 onward. Also study the reference of 
such language as that of Mark xiii.24 to the passing of one age 


44 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


and the coming in of another; cf. Peter’s interpretation of Pente- 
cost in similar language from Joel, Acts i. 


Study Excerpts nn.91-93. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. In the interpretation of the race’s religious life, in the 
Theological Works, what epochal realizations of the spiritual life 
have there been on this earth? 

2. To what new epoch does the teaching look? 

3. What bearing on the race’s better aspirations has such a 
history? Contrast with the idéa of one “fall” and a subsequent 
decline. 


43, The Sum Total Realization of the Spiritual Life: 
the Maximus Homo. Christianity has always had a 
vision of the “Church Triumphant.” ‘The teaching of 
the New Church enlarges on this vision, and gives it a 
fuller content. Each successive development of the 
spiritual life in this world or in any other inhabited world 
is laid up in its fruits and gains and activity in the 
peoples who have been party to it as these men and 
women are brought into the great world of the spirit 
(§ 42). With each fresh development of the spiritual 
life, bringing out some new possibility of life from God, 
this body of redeemed humanity in the world beyond and 
of regenerating humanity in this world, is perfected and 
farther-flung. Into this largest realization of all of the 
spiritual life mankind is moving. In this splendid sense 
it is heir to all the ages. To this largest realization of 
all of the spiritual life the teaching of the New Church 
gives the name “maximus homo”’ or greatest man. For 
this regenerating humanity, always rising from the earth, 
but the great body of it in the heavens of the spiritual 
world, is a greatest man, with human life realized 
harmoniously, with endless variety, and in_ inter- 
dependent service. It is a redeemed human society which 
has reached true proportions in realization of the image 
of God, has God indeed for its soul, and for its bodily 
activity the useful human activities of the universe. We 
shall come back to the subject when we think of the goal 


BHI SPI RT CUAL DLE 45 


of creation, of Providence, and therefore of. history 


(§§ 104, 106). 


Compare Ephesians i.22, 23; v.30; iv.15, 16; iv.25; Romans 
xii.4, 5; 1 Corinthians xii. 12-27; John xiv.2. 


Study Excerpts nn.94, 95. 


QUESTION: 


1. What splendid vision does the teaching set before us in what 
it calls the “maximus homo”’? 


44. Group Spiritual Life. There runs through the 
thought of larger realizations of the spiritual life, 
whether epochal (§ 42) or final (§ 43), an illuminating 
idea of which the most is made in the teaching of the 
New Church. ‘That is, that any group of human beings 
is but a larger man. It should exhibit, therefore, on a 
proportionate scale the individual man’s conscience, his 
spiritual standards, his aversion from wrong-doing. 
The larger neighbor (§§ 22, 23), to whom a heavier 
obligation runs than to the single human being, is en- 
titled to this larger regard only because he is or may be 
a realization of the spiritual life larger than the private 
experience of regeneration. The group, if it is a group 
man, is a group of consciences; if it is a group of 
Christian men, it is a group of Christian purposes; it is 
a more significant spiritual possébility in every way. 
Recent Christianity, more and more alive to. this thought 
in the “social gospel,’ asks more urgently right along 
for Christian standard and action from the groups into 
which our civilization forms, as well as from the private 
person. ‘There are evils, like war, or unjust economic 
conditions, which are maintained, not by any individuals 
that can be designated, but in the social organism, re- 
quiring collective avoidance, and the action of a social 
conscience (§ 9). The moral integrity and conscience 
and Christian practice of a class means more for us all 
than an individual’s religious experience, though it must 
come, of course, by way of the latter. The spiritual 
vigor and Christian principles of the country mean more 


46 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


than any lesser realization of the spiritual life in it. It 
is one of the features of the teaching of the New Church 
that it throws the religious life on this larger scale on 
which so much of our life to-day is lived. 


Consider that this is only a growth from the fact that religion 
never was a solitary experience, but always involves one’s fellows. 
Notice the plurals in the Lord’s Prayer. Did the Lord feel that 
He could speak of the spiritual life, or the lack of spiritual life, in 
a whole city? Matthew xi.20-24. In a whole generation? 
Matthew xi.16-19, xii.39. Compare the reading in Revelation 
ii and ili “to the angel in Ephesus of the church,” as though the 
community had a spiritual life which was to be brought out. Also 
consider again the social goal in Revelation xi.15, and in xxi, xxi. 


Study Excerpts nn.95, 54. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Does a heavier obligation run to the larger neighbor just be- 
cause the latter is larger? “Then, why? 

2. What idea underlies the conviction that there is such a thing 
as a group realization of the spiritual life? 


45. The Church, and the Realization of the Spiritual 
Life. Let us remind ourselves again that any realization 
of the spiritual life, in some community, is in the 
language of the Theological Works a “church.” (a) 
The individual, as a member of such a community, is a 
“church”; (b) the community (or group of regenerate 
lives) is; (c) an epochal development of the spiritual 
life over centuries with any people, is a “church” (we 
say ‘religious era’). But we turn now to the “church” 
in the common sense of the word: (d) an organization 
for the cultivation and spreading of the spiritual life. 
Theological doctrine strictly has little to do with the 
ecclesiastical body, rather with the spiritual life. We 
have already noticed the distinction it makes between the 
spiritual and the ecclesiastical (§ 13). But religious 
bodies exist for and indeed because of the spiritual life, 
being formed in its interests. They mean to bring that 
life to notice, to educate in it, and to extend it. We note 
here three large ways in which the ecclesiastical body 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 47 


serves the spiritual life. 1. The church as an ecclesias- 
tical body has the Word to proclaim; the Word “makes 
the Church” in the sense of forming men’s spiritual life. 
2. The ecclesiastical body has the sacraments to ad- 
minister; baptism, with a powerful symbolism, calls to 
the spiritual life, and the Holy Supper, in a symbolic en- 
actment of our dependence on the Lord for our true life, 
helps keep us in it. 3. The church, or the ecclesiastical 
body, ministers to the instinct of worship, and by regular 
public worship aims to awaken and nourish aspiration 
for the spiritual life, and to sustain a people in it. 


Turn to Matthew xxiii.13-33 for the Lord’s severe view of 
ecclesiastical institutions which fail of their professed purpose. 
Study especially verse 23 for the relation between ecclesiastical 
body and spiritual life. Then turn to Matthew v.13-16 for His 
encouragement to the first disciples to be all that a company of pro- 
fessing Christians can be. Read Matthew xxviii. 19, 20. 


Study Excerpts nn.96-99; 27, 46. 


QUESTIONS: 

1. Distinguish (b) and (d) above. 

2. State four large functions of the ecclesiastical body in its 
service to the spiritual life of men. 


THE GOAL OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 
THE SPIRITUAL WoRLD 


46. Introductory. There is in the spiritual life a 
feeling that it makes and has a world of its own. It is 
not a fine flower on the root of a passing material exist- 
ence. It is itself an enduring experience; the things it 
knows, truth and the good, are timeless, and God 
eternal. An assurance of immortality inheres in it. If 
so, then that inner world is going to be the scene of the 
spiritual life eventually. There our best life will possess 
itself of an environment of its own. But not only those 
who attain the spiritual life continue to live hereafter, in 
the teaching of the New Church. All men and women 
do. Immortality is dependent not on having the re- 


48 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


generate life, but on the possession of a structure and 
organism fitted for existence in the spiritual world. This 
every human being has. Every man being spirit primar- 
ily, every life continues. We proceed now, therefore, to 
a study of what the teaching of the New Church has to 
say of the spiritual world. We shall consider that world 
at large. But we shall be mindful especially of it as the 
goal of our existence, and the full accomplishment of the 
spiritual life which we have been considering. ‘Ihere, 
unhappily, too, is the full’ exhibition of what our life is 
like, when the spiritual life has not been attained, merci- 
fully as we are still cared for by the Divine. 


Note the Lord’s recognition of our instinctive belief in im- 
mortality John xiv.2. Study Matthew xxii.31, 32; John v.29; 
Matthew xxv.46. Note that while the Scriptures make the eternal 
life conditional on attainment of the regenerate state, they do not 
so make immortal existence conditional (John iii.15, 16, 36). 


Study Excerpts nn.5, 9, 10, 100, 101. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Is immortality conditioned on one’s having the spiritual life? 
What is? 

2. In what is immortality seated? 

3. In what connection with what precedes, are we bringing the 
subject of the spiritual world into our Outline? 


47, The Other World: Inner. The world other than 
the world of material existence is made up of what we 
call “mind” and “spirit,” “inner” and ‘‘subjective” in 
life. Thought, faith, aspiration, reliance in another, be- 
long to the spiritual world. Life is there; and even 
forces, like cohesion, which we know acting on objects of 
any sort, or like the vitality in vegetation, are energies 
traceable not only in the end to God but first to the 
spiritual world by way of which He acts into the world 
of nature. As to our minds, thinking, and feeling we 
are now, therefore, in the spiritual world; it is a sub- 
jective realm, as we say. We consider it so first. The 
heart of the other world, even when after death we come 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 49 


to look out on it as we do on this, is this inner life of 
ours, its states and motives and powers and thought—a 
life either of right and full development (§ 7), or a life 
in which the deeper and better self has gone undeveloped, 
indeed, been refused (§ 7). Heaven is this right and 
full development of life; hell this part-life, lived for the 
present world, without higher objectives than it affords. 
The life* which sweeps out from the Lord, of disin- 
terested service rendered in faith in Him, is what makes 
heaven. ‘The refusal of such response to God, leaving 
life to the promptings of self and the objectives of the 
world, is what makes hell. ‘The other world, then, in 
itself regarded, whether in its better part or its unhappy, 
is this inner life of ours, and of all men. It is the realm 
of the good and true, or the realm of the evil and false. 
Let us take in first this “inwardness” of the spiritual 
world, and not place it “somewhere else,” and so make 
it spatial. 


Consider Luke xvii.20, 21. Read the Beatitudes through, all 
blessings on traits of character, which belong in and are heaven. 


Also read Matthew xv.10-20. 
Study Excerpts nn. 102-104. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Is the other world a state of existence, i.e., a condition of 


character, primarily, or a “place”? 
2. Inthe terms of § 7 what is heaven? What is hell? 
3. What makes heaven? What makes hell? 


48. The Other World: Outer. Still the other world, 
in which we are even now, is not always a realm inward 
to us only, as it is at present. When we pass into it more 
fully on the death of the body which holds our conscious- 
ness down on this world, it comes to lie about us as 
objective as this world does now. It appears to us then 
a world like this world. That is, to the sensation of the 
spirit it has its phenomenal side. No reality but has a 





* Called in the teaching “the Divine of the Lord,” 


50 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


phenomenal side, or we should never know it. Every 
manner of life makes an outer world of its own; the 
American spirit has fashioned the land we live in; in- 
tellectual life creates a world of educational institutions, 
literature, and libraries; the life of the spirit has its 
proper world. There are objects there; there is a land- 
scape which the eye of the spirit sees; there are sounds 
which the ear which catches meanings hears; all the out- 
ward appearance of the spiritual world has at least as 
much reality to the faculties of the spirit as have hills of 
stone and earth and rivers of water to the senses of the 
body. We are in a world of another substance and stuff, 
that is all; but it is a world, extended, full of objects, 
peopled, and astir with activity. It has its Sun, for ex- 
ample. In the world of the spirit the infinite life of the 
Divine Being is the central reality, sustaining all other 
life, warming and lighting it, and also governing it much 
as the sun we know does this world. ‘This central reality 
is the Sun of the world of the spirit, striking sensation 
so, as the great blazing center of all the ardor and light 
of life. Objects in that world, like dwellings, and land- 
scapes, and rivers and hills, we must also place in the 
realm of the mind and spirit; but they are actual there 
and go to make up a world far exceeding this in beauty 
and wonder. The Theological Works report (cf. § 2) 
on this outer world with a wealth of detail; but into this 
description of phenomena theological teaching strictly 
(and it is of that we are attempting to give an outline) 
hardly goes; we note only the reality, and beauty, of the 
outer spiritual world, and the great law that the outer 
is the inner appearing in the sensation of the human 
spirit, and perfectly reflects the inner state (§ 47). 


2 Kings vi. 15-17; Matthew xvii. 1-8; Revelation i. 10-20. 
Study Excerpt n.105. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why has the other world its phenomena, too? 
2. Where, however, must we place its phenomena? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE al 


3. What effort do you find you have to make in order to think 
of the spiritual world as spiritual? 
4. How is outer spiritual world related to inner? 


ENTRANCE, AND THE ENTRY, INTO THE 
SPIRITUAL WORLD 


49. Death and Resurrection. We are living now in 
the world of the spirit, as we have said, but we are not 
conscious of it around us as we are of the natural world. 
Our consciousness is drawn down into the material 
world, and let out on i#. Our existence in the body and 
the exercise of all our powers by way of the body does 
this. But when that body ceases to serve us for one 
reason and another, and dies, our consciousness is re- 
leased into the world of the spirit. Then by way of the 
body of the spirit we apprehend directly, as objective, 
the world of the spirit. The body of the spirit is an in- 
strument of action and an organ of sense suited to that 
world. After only a brief interval following the de- 
parture of life from the physical body the human being 
finds himself coming to consciousness in the other world. 
The disclosures about the other world in the teaching 
of the New Church picture this passage from conscious- 
ness here to consciousness there as short, as a gentle 
sleep, and as attended by the tenderest ministration 
from men and women already in the spiritual world 
(§ 58). Swedenborg was himself permitted to travel the 
course of this passage from consciousness to conscious- 
ness with the retention of some capacity of observation, 
and as nearly as could be without the death of the body, 
and among his most striking records of other-world ex- 
perience has set down (H. 448-451) an account of 
resuscitation and resurrection of the human spirit in 
which death appears as the natural and expected transi- 
tion from one world to the other. 


Matthew ix.24; Luke xxii.43; John xx.12; 1 Corinthians 
xv .42-44. 


Study Excerpts nn. 106, 107. 


52. AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 
QUESTIONS: 


1. When, according to the teaching, does the human spirit come 
to consciousness in the other world? 

2. How? 

3. How many of the points of § 49 do you find in the Scriptures 
cited ? 

50. The Great Entrance Hall of the Spiritual World. 
At the close of life here most of us are of a mixed char- 
acter, morally and spiritually. Many lives are spiritu- 
ally immature, too, never aroused to a vision of the 
spiritual life (§ 35), and so not guilty either of having 
turned their backs on the vision. ‘he latter have yet to 
have the great choice put before them. The rest have 
incongruous things to drop from them; the best are 
conscious of much in them which they cannot “take into 
heaven’’; and the worst will have decencies and generosi- 
ties clinging to them which they have used to their own 
ends, but which hell does not know. For life of this in- 
determinate or mixed character there must be an in- 
determinate realm in the world of the spirit. Indeed, 
if our supreme law is true,—that inner in the spiritual 
world creates outer to correspond with it—then this life 
of a mixed moral and spiritual character, or an arrested 
spiritual development, results in a realm intermediate 
between heaven and hell. ‘The disclosures about the 
other world in the teaching of the New Church contain 
much about such a third division in the world of the 
spirit. ‘he teaching calls this third division “the world 
of spirits’—for it is an extensive world in itself, and 
men and women, good spirits and bad, come there first. 
It is the entrance hall of the spiritual world, a vast im- 
migration station, if we may call it so, where the human 
being usually first regains consciousness and continues 
for a time, until the incongruous is laid off the character, 
and one’s choice of life is fully made. 


Romans vii.23, 24; Luke vi.43-45; Matthew vi.24; Matthew 
xxv.31-46 (consider where the judgment on human life, assigning 
a life to heaven, or to hell, can take place except in an intermediate 
realm). 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 53 


Study Excerpts nn. 108, 109. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Where does a human life usually first regain consciousness 
after death? 
2. What reasons can you give why there must be such an inter- 


mediate realm between heaven and hell as ‘“‘the world of spirits” of 
New Church teaching? 


51. Purposes and Experiences of the World of 
Spirits. Obviously the purpose of the world of spirits is 
to bring each human life to moral and spiritual consist- 
ency under one Master or the other. It is an oppor- 
tunity for integration of the character around one’s su- 
preme motive in life, good or bad. This is accomplished 
by stages. For a while the man thinks and feels much 
as he did here. His supposition that he has not died 
creates around him the accustomed environment. He is 
the man he has been taken to be, and that he has 
deemed himself to be. In this relatively superficial state 
he has wide contact with others, however inwardly un- 
like they may all be; re-unions of indiscriminate and gen- 
eral character are possible in the world of spirits in the 
first consciousness there. But if entrance on the spiritual 
world means anything, it means a deepening of conscious- 
ness. One moves in perforce on his actual life, and 
realizes and manifests his true self. He “comes to him- 
self.’ Under the steady pressure of the transparencies 
of the spiritual world, he becomes wholly the man that 
inwardly he is. It may be the man that the world saw; 
it may not be, but this second, inward state soon follows. 
What one has only seemed to have in the way of traits 
and desires, good or bad, is sloughed in this process of 
coming to one’s true self. What inheres in one’s es- 
tablished trend of spirit, stays; what only adheres to one, 
and is inconsistent with the actual character, falls away. 
One’s true self is occupied with frankness, but, what ts 
more nearly the purpose of this second experience in the 
world of spirits, with force and consistency. “Che human 
spirit in whom conscience has died, and to whom it turns 


54 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


out that self and the world have been the only realities, 
finds his actual nature stripped bare. He is found with- 
out ‘‘spiritual life.’ He is reduced in circumstances, in 
a sense that few are in this world. We shall give a 
thought in a moment to his other-world lot as the teach- 
ing of the New Church describes it. For the man whose 
inner mind and nature have been developed in regenera- 
tion, there is a third experience in the world of spirits 
before he finds his place in the other world. He enters 
on a period of larger and*deeper information in the life 
which the Lord has laid up in him, for it is richer than 
he has known (cf. Excerpt n.43e and note 3), and he is 
to know and enjoy the fulness of it. By these three 
stages and experiences for the regenerating, and by the 
two for the unregenerate, every human spirit is brought 
in the world of spirits to consistency of character and an 
inevitably defined place in the spiritual world. 


Matthew vi.24; xxv.14-30, especially 29; xiii.24-30, 47-52, 
Luke viii. 17. 


Study Excerpt n.110. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What three successive ‘‘states’? may mark one’s experience 
in the world of spirits? 

2. What is the purpose of the experience there? 

3. Must there be a supreme or ruling purpose in a life? Why? 

4. How many of the points in § 51 do you find in the Scrip- 
tures cited? 


52. Moral Continuity of Life Here and Hereafter. 
Could it be made plainer than these experiences of the 
world of spirits make it that human life here and here- 
after has moral continuity? It remains of the same in- 
ward character which it had here; that character is only 
brought to the light. ‘The future life and this life are 
spiritually of a piece. The teaching of the New Church 
in this way gives the idea of the survival of personal 
identity its full force. It not only asserts that the human 
being lives on equipped with memory, in which his ident- 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 55 


ity is preserved, and with powers, like those of thought, 
feeling, and speech, which keep him still a human being. 
He also survives the identical individual he is. The 
quality of the life continues. His essential character sees 
no alteration in his new environment. Any change con- 
sists in his becoming more thoroughly and manifestly 
what inwardly he is. He has a life-structure erected on 
the basis of an experience which is now a closed book, 
and a fixed quantity; on this basis he builds in the long 
future. The report is not that no opportunity for fresh 
moral decision is given him in the intermediate world; 
both the good and the evil find such opportunity in this 
indeterminate world; but each, as a matter of observed 
fact, clings to what has become life to him, and to his 
governing desire. 


Matthew xvi.27; Revelation xx.12, 13; Jeremiah xxxii.19; 
Galatians vi.7; Revelation xxii. 11. 


Study Excerpts nn.111-113. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Distinguish personal identity, continuance as a human being, 
and moral identity in the risen human life. 

2. Consider that in a realm of indeterminate character like the 
world of spirits there must be opportunity for fresh moral de- 
cision. What else has to be reckoned with, however? What 
weight has the whole trend of a life-time in this world? 


53. Judgment. As we take in the significance of the 
first two states in the experience of the world of spirits 
(§ 51), we must feel that the man is then and there 
being judged. ‘The judgment is not staged in a court, 
or spectacular; it is the realization by each human being 
of his own inward nature. What was this nature made, 
or allowed to become, as one welcomed or refused the 
regeneration which life offered? ‘There is no evading 
what is written in our innermost heart and spirit. Is it 
life? Is it what we took for life, an existence for self 
and the world, which is ‘death’? All that we sought in 
sincerity to be, our limitations and our opportunities are 


56 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


reckoned with; but in view of all this, what is the life 
which we have made our own? Written in our es- 
tablished purposes, motives and thinking is that “book 
of life’ out of which we are assigned our place in the 
world of spirit. “The experiences of the world of spirits 
only display what is written in that book, and lead us to 
our place either in the infernal world, or in the heavenly. 
We turn next to a consideraiton of these worlds. 


Romans ii.1-11; John xii.48; 1 Samuel xvi.7, 11.3; Jeremiah 
xvul.10; Revelation xx.12, xxi.27, iii.5. These passages will 
bear close thought on the fact there is a judgment, Who judges, 
what is judged, and on man’s “book of life.” 


Study Excerpts nn.114-116; 104. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. In what does “judgment’’ consist ? 
2. Where does it take place? 
3. When? 

4. On what does it pass? 


HELL 


o4. Fact, Origin, and General Nature. Can any one 
question that there has been active and deliberate rejec- 
tion of the spiritual life by men without number, and by 
even whole ages? Or that the life engrossed in self and 
the world has seen frank and unscrupulous cultivation 
(cf. § 28)? Life in which cruelty, greed, injustice, 
revenge, deceit, and impurity trample conscience, is a 
fact. No human being originates these perversions, and 
he adds but infinitesimally to the mass of them. But this 
mass of evil is all that the teaching of the New Church 
means by “‘hell.” Even in life here, evil is ascribable, of 
course, to the spiritual world. And just as the spiritual 
life and gains and achievements of the race are laid up 
in the other world in heavens, so the iniquities, moral 
perversions and unspiritual life of the race are accumu- 
lated with the unregenerate in an infernal world there. 
If that life is due to a perverted will, and to a corrupt 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 57 


motive more, the teaching thinks of it as constituting one 
large division of the infernal world—to which it gives 
the name ‘‘diabolical kingdom’’; but if the infernal life 
springs more from deliberately pursued falsities, that 
kingdom is called the “satanic kingdom.” Not only are 
there these two types of life alienated from God, but in 
either type it can be entered on more or less deeply, and 
the disclosures of the teaching of the New Church about 
the other world speak of three hells, one worse than the 
other. If, then, we only remind ourselves that a life 
given up to self and the world’s possessions is life spoiled 
and wrested from its true order, we have at once set 
before us the means to three conclusions: 1. The fact 
that there is a hell; it is this disordered and degraded 
life. 2. The fact that its origin is in the human being’s 
choice of lower incentives as against his higher prompt- 
ings. 3. Its general nature is perversion and falsifica- 
tion, a life in which motives which are sound in their 
place, regard to self and to possessions, are put upper- 
most, inevitably to the violation of life’s finest aspirations 
and Divinely intended nature. 


Compare the Lord’s thought for an unhappy destiny in another 
world: Mark ix.43-48, Matthew xxv.41-46; xxv.30; on the 
reality of an infernal region, see John vi.70, viii.44, Matthew 
xvi.23, compare the Lord’s own temptations, Matthew iv.1-11. 


Study Excerpts nn. 117-119. 
QUESTIONS: 
1. What do we mean by “hell’’? 


2. How does such a world of the evil and the false come to be? 

3. What is its general nature? 

4. What large divisions in it does the teaching of the New 
Church speak of? 


55. Punishment, Amendment, Use. The teaching of 
the New Church, as it reports the Seer’s observation of 
the world of the spirit (§ 2), has much to tell us of the 
external features and the details of fact about the in- 
fernal world. The whole physical aspect of that world 


58 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


is repulsive, and the perverted beings in it in any true 
light are deformed and monstrous, though not in the 
glamour of their own fancies and feelings. But the 
phenomena of that world are not part of theological 
teaching strictly, and we keep our small space for the 
teaching of direct religious moment. We want here to 
look at some general aspects of the world of disordered 
human life. We take up three questions which will 
doubtless present themselves. What punishment is 
visited on men and women there? As the teaching of 
the New Church answers, evil has its severe limitations, 
within which it begins to recoil on itself, and its miseries 
then, its frustrated efforts, its perpetual discontent, its 
harrowing illusions, are its punishments, a penalty car- 
ried in itself. Past deeds are not penalized; this punish- 
ment attends the continued degenerate activity. And as 
hell, in the thought of the New Church, is life from 
which all conscience has been forced out, none of this 
punishment can be spoken of as torment of conscience. 
But is there no chance of amendment in this infernal 
world? ‘The teaching speaks of a steady amelioration 
of life in the hells. ‘The motives which form it cannot 
be changed; increasing restraint can be put on their ac- 
tivity and expression. ‘There is also a merciful restraint 
on the processes of degradation; a life does not fall to 
any worse level than was its condition on passing from 
the present world. And a third question—what can such 
a world be good for? How, from that point of view, 
can there be one in the Divine economy? Now that a 
hell has come to be, it has its place in the Divine 
economy. It does not slip from the disciplining hand of 
God, and indeed is mercifully regarded by God; after 
all, it is ‘‘the heaven of self-seekers.’’ We may note 
two ways in which the whole unseen world of evil is 
utilized: (a) Its Divinely tempered influence upon men 
and “women an this life ‘excites existino» evil herc.eanl 
brings it out, to be seen, and resisted, and put down. It 
serves as a yeast to moral and spiritual development. 
(b) Again, it is utilized to establish against the influence 


‘CHE SPIRU CUAL LIFE 59 


of heaven a general equipoise of influences, good and 
bad, into which each human will is let in private adjust- 
ment, and so assured free moral agency. Recall § 28. 


adi nie Viele elO sesame Xxxiy.2 ineiLuke. Xxil.ol;. Psalm 


Exe Ag: 
Study Excerpts nn. 120-124. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What is the manner of punishment visited on those in hell? 

2. What are they punished for? 

3. Is there any amendment of the hells? 

4, In what way can we think of the hells serving? Name more 
than one use to which they can conceivably be put. 


HEAVEN 


56. Nature, General Divisions. The perversion of 
the life which comes to us (as forms of re-action to life, 
§ 5) is hell. It is an inward condition, first of all. To 
come to such a condition is to come into hell. It is the 
only final failure in life. For it is alienation from what 
is true, and real, and from God. MWHeaven is also first 
of all an inward condition; to arrive at that condition is 
to come into heaven; and it is the only success, after all, 
that one can make of life. Heaven is the reception of 
what good and true appear to us as sincerely, self-lessly 
and communicatively as possible. It is living from two 
motives supremely, regard to God, and serviceable re- 
lation to our neighbors. ‘That manner of life the Lord 
is constantly proffering men; it is His life; and the 
response we can make to His life makes heaven. We 
respond either very much from the heart and from our 
aspirations, and live a type of the spiritual life which the 
teaching of the New Church calls “‘celestial,’’ or we 
respond more from a recognition of the truth of this 
way of life, and live a type of life called in the teaching 
msDicitualeeum lshicse earcy distinct stypess.otalife. ini the 
heavens, and reveal themselves in two great “kingdoms’”’ 
there (as the large divisions are denominated). But in 


60 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


each type there is a conceivable lesser realization of the 
spiritual life, from obedience as a motive. ‘The teaching 
reports on three great heavens, therefore, one of the 
“celestial kingdom” wholly, another of the “‘spiritual 
kingdom” wholly, and a third dividing between the 
kingdoms, as the obedience to precept is impulsive and 
of the heart more, or studied, and a recognition of prin- 
ciple. Whatever the response made by men and women 
who have seen the beginnings of regeneration in some 
natural world, the Lord’s own outgoing life and presence 
are the underlying and inspiring reality. ‘The Divine of 
the Lord makes heaven.” It makes it first as an inner 
life realized in an indefinitely increasing number of hu- 
man beings. It makes a heaven, too, which is an outer 
world, the existence in the sensation of this inner joy, and 
truth, and beauty. 


Consider how much the Lord remained on the inner life of 
heaven in any references to it. Consider the Beatitudes, and much 
of the Sermon on the Mount. On the outward conditions He fore- 
bore to say much. Compare Mark xii.25e. “To a thought for 
these outward conditions He can move usefully when the inner 
realities are appreciated. 


Study Excerpts nn. 125-127. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. In what does heaven consist essentially ? 

2. What beings help constitute it? 

3. Say why we cannot be in heaven unless heaven is in us. 

4. What large variations on the life of heaven can you make 
out? 


57. Variety in the Heavenly Life and World. Again 
there is a wealth of detail in the report which the teaching 
of the New Church makes about the tangible world of 
heaven. We are told innumerable things about the ob- 
servable features of that world. But again we hold in 
this outline to general aspects of the heavenly world which 
have to do with our living for it. One of the strik- 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 61 


ing features of the heavenly life is its variety. Heaven 
is no dead level. It is not all the same life. Everywhere, 
of course, the two supreme motives of the spiritual life 
are in evidence, but these differ indefinitely in ardor and 
intelligence. We have spoken of the general divisions in 
which the variety of heaven results, but in the kingdoms 
(a Scripture term, of course) and in the three heavens 
there are countless ‘‘societies,’’ or communities of men 
and women who share and perfect some good in common, 
and, as spiritual kindred, are associated to realize it. 
There is the added and untraceable variety of individual 
realization of the heavenly life. There are those richer 
in that life, and those poorer; those wiser, and those 
simpler; those endowed with more of its power, and those 
endowed with less. The wisdom which consists in the 
ability to hold life to the truth; the innocence which 1s 
eagerness to be led by promptings which are the Lord’s; 
the peace which is regeneration’s harmonizing of all one’s 
abilities and desires; these general qualities of the heaven- 
ly life are possessed and displayed in endless variation. 
Each individual seems to himself to be more and more his 
own master and the occupant of a peculiar place in life’s 
vast enterprise. ‘The endlessness of this development 
rests, of course, in the fact that the ‘‘Divine of the Lord,” 
to which heaven is the response in human life, never is 
exhausted by any accumulated response, but is capable of 
a new re-action world without end. 


John xiv.2, vi.37; 2 Corinthians xit.2; 1 Corinthians xi.4 on. 
Study Excerpts nn. 127-129. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What general features of the heavenly world can you name 
which result in giving it variety? 

2. What are some of the heavenly life’s general qualities? 

3. Why can there be no “closing” heaven? 


58. Progress in Heaven; Activities There. The 
master loves of the heavenly life must issue in a life of 


62 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


steady communication of what is good and true. Desire 
to co-operate with the will of God, Who has made the 
universe a “kingdom of uses,’’ and to live in serviceable 
relation to one’s fellow human beings, will mean lives of 
constant usefulness. Nor is only this desire present, but 
one’s capacities for doing are renewed. Nearer the 
source of life as one is in heaven, one moves into steadily 
greater vigor and into the prime of one’s energies and 
faculties. ‘The full vigor of manhood and womanhood 
marks the heavenly life; to-it all return who have passed 
it. ‘To it all move on who enter the other world in child- 
hood; it is the full-grown life which realizes to the full 
the spiritual life as any other life. For individuals and 
for the spiritual alliances which the teaching calls ‘“‘so- 
cieties’”’ and for entire heavens there come to be count- 
less activities—the interchange of spiritual commodities 
of every kind, the discovery of opportunities for redeem- 
ing and enriching life further, the resuscitation and edu- 
cation of the newly arrived, the administration of order, 
civil and ecclesiastical, the further education of the spirit- 
ual life of all, the exertion of constraints on the world of 
moral disorder and evil, the communication of good in- 
fluence and true suggestion to life in this world, in general 
the guidance of the great spheres of influence into this 
world. The heavens have their activities, themselves 
know recreation, and have a history of growth. 


See what these Scriptures yield on the points above: Revelation 
xiv.13; Luke xv.10; xxit.43; Hebrews 1.14. 


Study Excerpts nn. 130-134. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What happens to our powers, if they have failed in old age 
here, to insure activity and growth in the heavenly world? Why? 

2. Do children remain children in the other world? 

3. Name some general activities in which a heavenly world 
must engage. Why ‘must’? 

4. Is heaven a communicative society? Communicative of 
what? Is hell an acquisitive society? Acquisitive of what? 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 63 


INFLUENCE OF THE OTHER WORLD, AND 
COMMUNICATION WITH IT 


59. Other-World Influence. Communication with 
the Dead. The other world, as has been said, is a world 
in which we are at this moment living. It constitutes our 
unseen environment. It breathes out both good and evil 
into us; our thoughts, our feelings, as the life which ani- 
mates us, come by way of it. Personal associations which 
we have there, all unknown to us, adapt life to us and 
convey it tous. But the two worlds are connected beyond 
this converging in us. The whole universe on which we 
look out at present is a projection outward, in the stuff 
we call ‘‘matter,” of the inner world. The two are dis- 
tinct levels of existence in a spiritual-natural universe. 
The inner world is the animation of the natural universe, 
the source of its energies and forces, the region where 
ultimately the vital forces of animal and vegetable life 
are to be found, the realm from which the human being 
has thought and impulse. 

Obviously, conscious communication with such a world 
may in instances take place. The human being has an 
organism for living in it, and it is all about him. Instances 
of communication are recorded in and out of the Bible. 
An occasional person will see or hear into the other world; 
or some communication come from it to some one here. 
But the deliberate effort to communicate with the other 
world, when curious, ignores what seems to be a Divinely 
intended difference of consciousness. We here are not 
meant to have another existence breaking in on us; nor 
are men and women in the other world for the most 
part near enough the corporeal existence ever to desire 
touch with this world. When one ignores this wall of 
consciousness one is not likely to get results or any results 
worth having, for it is those still close to the bodily 
existence, speaking in the terms of it, who will answer, or, 
worse, those who are as indifferent to Divinely intended 
order as the inquirers on this side are. As a scientific 
investigation, hedged by safeguards, this attempted com- 


64 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


munication has the standing of any scientific experiment; 
as a cult, the teaching which feels itself based on much 
other-world observation, looks on this attempted com- 
munication as unwholesome. 


Psalm \xviii.17, xxxiv.7; 2 Kings vi.16,17; Luke xxiv.4, 


xvi.31; Revelation 1. 
Study Excerpts nn.135-137; 90. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Where is the spiritual world? 

2. What is its activity in this world? 

3. As two distinct levels of existence, are spiritual world and 
natural world separate or inseparable? Discuss. 

4, What shall we think of communication with the other world 
a) when it is unsolicited and occasional? b) when it is the subject 
of guarded scientific investigation? c) when it is practiced as a 
cult, more or less curiously? 


60. Review. The Spiritual Life. With this brief 
résumé of the teaching of the New Church on the spiritual 
world, the goal of our life, we conclude our consideration 
of our first main heading. The spiritual life is not an 
unnatural one; it is pointed to and called for by man’s 
very endowments and capacities and aspirations; and it 
is achieved in living our present life with regard to God 
and in due relation to the neighbor. It is distinguishable 
from, as it is related to, morality, as well as other ways 
of life with which it is sometimes confused. It is a two- 
sided development, a growth in faith, and in that disin- 
terested spirit of service called ‘charity.’ Gift that it is 
from the Divine Being, it requires our active seeking, and 
study, and moral and spiritual struggle to have it. It is 
to be found not only in private regeneration, and not 
only in the individual’s loyalty to larger neighbors than 
his fellow- man ; but in larger realization, too, in any 
groups and in collective humanity. Its final perfection 
lies in the other world, where it issues in a society of 


THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 65 


redeemed men and women whose life is from the Lord, 
just as human life which has had its vision of the spiritual 
life but spurned it for its own way and conceptions, issues 
there in a world of evil and disorder, still cared for, how- 
ever, and governed by the one God. 

Make your own résumé of §§ 1-59. Review Scripture 
citations, Excerpts, and Questions. 





THE WORD 


If. THE WORD 


61. Introductory. We pass to our second main topic, 

the Word (§ 3). Having confronted ourselves with the 
life which we call spiritual—namely, the whole human 
existence lived with regard to God and in useful relation 
to others (§ 10)—we shall appreciate that to live this 
life we need constant inspiration to it, and a growing 
knowledge of it. Indeed, we need to have it proposed 
and disclosed to us in the first place (cf. § 29). All this 
the Scriptures of Old and New Testament do, and for 
ages have done. They disclose that there is such a life. 
They show what it is. They perpetually urge and inspire 
to it. It is worth stressing this practical outlook on our 
second topic which consideration of the spiritual life 
first gives us. If we have made the spiritual life plain to 
thought, we shall feel our need of the Scriptures (or of 
revelation in some form) to disclose that life to us, to 
inspire us to it, and to inform and guide us in it. 


Psalm cxix.9, 19, 105, 133; cxliii.8; Matthew iv.4; John v.39, 
40; vi. 68. 


QUESTION: 


1. What practical bearing has been given our second topic by 
our having considered the spiritual life first? 


REVELATION 


62. Our Need of Revelation. The spiritual life is our 
passing existence with enduring values and goals set in it. 
It calls for something more than the light of this world 
just to be seen. The light of a higher world must play 
on the human mind. This, broadly and essentially, is 

69 


70 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


‘revelation.’ More definitely, ‘revelation’ is the communi- 
cation, in the activity of such light, of any truth of the 
spiritual life to men, or the disclosure of some fact or law 
of the world of the spirit. To insight into these things 
the mind rises only in a light above that of this world. 
One reason, then, why we stand in need of revelation lies 
in the very subject-matter of revelation. Truth of the 
spiritual life lies in the light of a world which in its own 
character and distinct existence is unseen by us. 

We need revelation for other reasons. Even with 
revelation we tend to fall away from spiritual insight, 
from putting the eternal above the passing, and from 
Christian standard. Our strongest incentives, which at 
first come from love of self and the world, obscure the 
prime realities of life, God, truth, love, the neighborly 
society which human society is meant to be. Again, if 
we have a destiny which is realized in an eternal world, 
that destiny will have to be disclosed to us. For the 
world which we know for ourselves is a passing world. 
That passing world engrosses us, too. If we are to see 
and make for a goal beyond it, that goal must be definitely 
(and as material development goes on apace, ever more 
definitely) raised before our eyes by Him Whose goal 
alone it can be. The struggle of soul toward so high 
a destiny as well as the possibility of it makes revelation 
essential. 


John i.9; Psalm xxxvi.9; John vi.68; Psalm cxliti.8; Job xi.7; 
WONT LO. 


Study Excerpts nn. 138, 66, 139. 


QUESTIONS: 


1, What do you understand by ‘revelation’? 

2. How many distinct reasons do you find given above why we 
need revelation? Is there one given in the Excerpts but not given 
above? Put each in your own words. 


63. Revelation’s History. The reflection how neces- 
sary revelation is to the accomplishment of the spiritual 
life (§ 62), and other considerations, like the conviction 


THE WORD 71 


that the Divine is a self-revealing God and like the fact 
that men’s spiritual life has been undying (§ 42), lead 
one to believe that God has never left men without some 
expression of His will. Revelation has been constant. 
It has as long a history as the awakened human spirit 
has. Of course the forms which it has taken have been 
various. It may once have been only that broad activity 
of heavenly light on the human spirit which revelation 
(§ 62) essentially 1s. It became in time a more express 
communication of truth such as we also defined revelation 
to be (§ 62). ‘The teaching of the New Church traces 
the history of revelation down over its highest ridge, as 
it were, just as it traces the religious history of the race 
down over the “‘peak”’ developments (§ 42). Inthe most 
ancient realization of life under God revelation was un- 
written. It was an unspoiled heart’s reading of the 
Divine will in nature. What was thus arrived at in a 
childlike intuition, was treasured and transmitted in oral 
tradition to become a more explicit Word of God to the 
succeeding religious era (the “ancient church,” in the 
designation of the Theological Works). Thereupon reve- 
lation comes into history’s notice. We can trace the Word 
of God as it came to the Jews and was recorded by them 
later in the Old Testament Scriptures. Ushering in a 
fourth religious era, the Christian, the Lord spoke a truth 
to which the Old Testament had been tending and in 
which it was fulfilled, and His Gospel was set down in 
the New Testament. Now a deeper truth still, in both 
Testaments, out of the reach of the people to whom the 
plainer meanings came, and meant for the spiritual life 
of to-day, has been disclosed by the Lord in the inaugura- 
tion of a second Christian growth and development 
(§§ 42, 78). The ‘history’ of revelation falls a little 
outside our Outlines, which are outlines in the theological 
teaching of the New Church. Buta sketch of that history 
serves to give us our theological estimate of the Bible as 
the culmination of a series of revelations, and as the 
vehicle of further revelation, and thus ‘the crown of 
revelation’ (T.11). To appreciate that the Word of 


12 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


God has had other earlier expression does not take away 
in the least from the Scriptures. Nor does it take away 
from them to realize that revelation is a wider fact than 
they represent*; for after all in them revelation has 
found an ample and enduring expression. 


Study Excerpts nn. 140-144, 1. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Why can we believe that revelation has been constant? Did 
you give as many as three reasons? 


2. Sketch the history of revelation over the “epochal realizations 
of the spiritual life” (§ 42). 


THE NATURE OF THE WorD 
64, The Word the Body of Truth. When we appre- 


ciate that revelation has been constant (§ 63), or that 
‘the Word has always existed’ (Excerpt n.140), while 
the Scriptures did not always exist but formed over Jewish 
times, we are helped to see what the Word really is. It 
is that whole body of truth which, in the other world and 
here, inspires and fashions the spiritual life. “This body 
of truth, actually operating to redeem life here and to 
eternity to regenerate it, is the Word. ‘To this idea of 
the Word, the teaching of the New Church tries first to 
raise our thought. It is the decisive conception of the 
Word in the Theological Works. ‘To them the Word, 
or Divine truth, is the veriest reality in the universe—that 
body of forces and influences which order life, and inform 
the spiritual life. This great body of truth goes to 
fashion the purposes as well as the thoughts of life, the 
motives as well as the judgments. ‘There is a combina- 
tion of influences for good and for truth throughout the 
Word; or, as the teaching puts it, there is a marriage of 
good and truth in the Word. We shall go on presently to 
relate the Scriptures to the Word, and see how they are 
this Word, and also see how the profound marriage in the 
Word makes itself known in a mode of utterance in the 





—— 


* John i.9. 


THE WORD Jes 


Scriptures (§ 80), but for the moment let us be clear 
what the Word is in the view of the teaching—namely, 
the whole body of truth issuing from the Divine mind, 
and active in the inspiration and information of the 
spiritual life of men in whatever world. ‘Then we shall 
see better what the Scriptures really are which we have 
on this one planet, and which are only one of the expres- 
sions which the Word has had even here (§ 63). 


John i.1-4, 14; Psalm xxxiii.6; cxix.89; Genesis 1.3. 
Study Excerpts nn. 145-147. . 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Do you get hold of the conception of the Word stated above? 
Put it in your own words. 

2. What ‘marriage’ is there in the Word? What more is the 
Word than a body of ideas? 


65. The Word a Body of Accommodated Truth. 
Before we go on to relate the Scriptures to the Word, or 
see how they are the Word, there is one thought more 
to add to the conception of the Word as the body of 
truth which, issuing from the Divine mind, inspires and 
informs the spiritual life. ‘This life is not all of one type 
(§ 56). It is not all on one level of religious experience 
(§ 56). The mind of the Lord as it comes to one type 
or to one degree of spiritual life and another is differently 
grasped. It is a body of graduated truth. There will 
be a truth not grasped by even the highest angelic en- 
lightenment. There will be the apprehension which the 
Word will have in the highest development of the 
spiritual life in the heavens. There will be the more re- 
mote apprehensions which it will receive in the lower 
developments of the spiritual life there. Over these levels 
of higher ways of grasping it in the spiritual world the 
Divine truth will finally reach to our understanding here. 
The Word, then, is a body of truth successively adapted 
to the minds of God’s creatures and brought level with 
their understanding. It drops down over as many levels 
of meaning and apprehension as there are distinct realiza- 


74 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


tions of the spiritual life in the heavens and here. ‘The 
teaching of the New Church (as we might see for our- 
selves from § 56) distinguishes four ranges of truth in 
that whole body of truth which is the Word—three ap- 
prehensions, each interior to the other, in the conscious- 
ness of the men and women of heaven, and our this-world 
grasp of it. There will be more to say of these ranges of 
truth in the Word when we come to consider the deeper 
meanings or senses of Scripture (§ 76). 


1 Corinthians xiii.9-12; Isaiah lv.9; John iii.12; Psalm 
XVI 220. 


Study Excerpts nn.148, 149, 150. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. In the whole body of truth which is the Word how many 
levels of apprehension do you find? 


2. Why? 
SCRIPTURES AND WORD 


66. The Scriptures: a lowermost expression of the 
Word. We can now relate Old and New Testament 
Scriptures to the Word with more clarity, and see how 
they are the Word of God. They are a lowermost ex- 
pression of the Word, namely, to our understanding in 
this world. ‘They are not identical with the Word, 
strictly speaking. We shall one day leave the Scripture 
story behind, as we know it now, yet enter more fully 
on the Word. ‘The fact, too, that even here the Word 
has had other expression than the Scriptures makes it 
plain the two are not identical. The Scriptures are less 
than the Word, in one point of view. They are that 
lowermost expression to men’s minds here which the 
eternal Word has come to have in the course of a strik- 
ing religious development over centuries among a certain 
people. With another people even this expression of the 
Word in Scripture would have been different (A.10603), 
for the Word came by way of their experience and in 
education of them. Yet this lowermost expression of 


THE WORD 75 


the Word necessarily has all the Word behind or within 
it. It gives ample access to the limitless body of the truth 
of life. So we have the teaching declaring that the Word 
or the Scriptures is Divine truth itself. Nothing is meant 
by that statement so superficial as that the Scriptures are 
an inerrant book, or that every statement in them is true, 
but precisely this—that the Scriptures are an expression 
of that whole body of truth which inspires and fashions 
the spiritual life, and which is the Word. 


Isaiah lv.8, 9, Psalm xviii.25, 26; Matthew xix.7, 8; John 
iii.12; Matthew v.17-20, 43-48; Isaiah x1.8. 


Study Excerpts nn.147, 150, 151. 


QUESTION: 

1. Relate the Scriptures to the Word. Your statement should 
take care of a distinction between the two; it should also reckon 
with the fact that we have the Word in the Scriptures. 


67. Scripture: historical meaning, and hidden con- 
tent. This view of the Word and of the relation of the 
Scriptures to the Word leads to a big conclusion about 
Old and New Testament Scriptures. If they are this 
lowermost expression of the Word, the Word as a whole 
can be like a deeper content to them, or deeper meaning. 
This is the supreme insight of the teaching of the New 
Church into the Scriptures. ‘There is no more sweeping 
statement they make about the Scripture than that it has 
its historical and more or less obvious meaning (‘‘the 
natural sense’) and a deeper meaning (‘‘the spiritual 
sense’). Or the Scripture itself is called ‘the sense of 
the letter of the Word.” What a marvellous expression 
of the mind of God we have then in these Scriptures! 
They can open up into the mind of God for the needs of 
any new day. We reflect that the Lord Himself so 
treated the Old Testament (Matthew v.21 on). ‘The 
Scriptures have not only that meaning which to reading 
and study they bear on the face of them; they offer not 
only the truth which came through prophet and by the 
Master, in Whom prophecy reached its height; but they 


76 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


bear in their bosom a yet deeper meaning. If they are 
the lowermost expression of the Word, they must have 
a hidden content. The relation which we have been 
sketching between Scriptures and Word argues a deeper 
sense in Scripture. ‘This structure of Scripture we want 
now to study, looking more closely at the Scriptures as 
they read, and at their hidden content. 


Isaiah lv .8, 9; John iti.12; Isaiah x1.8. 
Study Excerpts nn.152, 157: 
QUESTIONS: 


1. If the Scriptures are the lowermost expression of the Word, 
what follows about their nature? 

2. Do you find the Scriptures themselves saying they have a 
deeper meaning? You must examine carefully each supposed 
declaration of the sort. Is the teaching about the nature of Scrip- 
ture to be drawn so much from the assertions of Scripture as from 
the thing Scripture can be found to be? 


SCRIPTURE, OR THE SENSE OF THE LETTER OF THE 
WorRD 


68. Progressive Revelation in Scripture. Of the 
nature of the Scriptures of course there are many signifi- 
cant things to say; we shall confine ourselves at present 
to one matter of significance to the teaching of which 
we are attempting an outline. ‘The Scriptures formed 
slowly over a thousand years. ‘They embrace a whole 
people’s religious education and discipline. We have 
noted (§ 66) that this people gave a turn to the Scrip- 
tures peculiar to themselves, to their possibilities, their 
national genius and their moral civilization. We shall 
expect to see their religious progress reflected in the 
Scriptures. Immature insights will be recorded, and more 
mature; conscientious duty will take superstitious form or 
morally repulsive form often enough; where views of 
nature or of history or even of the derivation of words 
come in, these will reflect the knowledge of the day, and 
will often be mistaken enough; imperfect moral stand- 


THE WORD 77 


ards, not at once elevated by religion’s influence, will be 
embodied in the story; but all the time the truth which 
God was urging on them is being spoken, and grasped, 
sometimes purely and loftily, often as it took form in 
an understanding and moral outlook now outgrown. All 
this is plain from any approach to Scripture. It is plain, 
too, to the theological approach to the Scriptures as the 
lowermost expression of the Word over centuries in the 
life of the Hebrews. ‘There are stages of revelation to 
reckon with, an insight which falls and mounts, and a 
truth now transparently put, now fallaciously seen, and 
again grasped simply primitively. One of the most com- 
prehensive and vital discriminations to make in the Scrip- 
tures therefore is between truth well grasped and spoken, 
and truth as it appeared (called ‘‘apparent truth” in the 
teaching) to the sense-governed mind or as it looked in 
the view of low moral standard. ‘The practical impor- 
tance of this discrimination will come out further in other 
connections (cf. § 90). An immediate result of making 
it is to give one touch with the living and advancing truth 
and meaning of Scripture. One gets the lively feeling 
that the Scriptures still embody a movement into truth, 
have more truth to yield in the total progress of revela- 
tion, and are not a set and lifeless deposit of past views 
and convictions. 


Consider Matthew v.21 on; xix.7, 8; Isaiah xxviii.9-11; 1 
Corinthians xii.9-12; John xvi.12. 


Study Excerpts nn. 153-155. 


QUESTIONS: 

1. What progress of thought is there in the Scriptures? 

2. Put in your own way the nature of the Scriptures due to that 
movement of thought. 

3. With what discrimination will you read in them? 


69. Ample Revelation of the Spiritual Life. Again, 
though the Scripture is the lowermost expression of the 
Word of God, and though it is marked by truth as it 
appeared to by-gone times, it serves to disclose the spirit- 


78 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


ual life still. That life is displayed as the prophets tried 
to bring it to the vision of their people. It is displayed 
peerlessly as the Lord Himself lived it. What truth 
needed to see and seek true life does not find plain expres- 
sion there? ‘The existence of God, His self-disclosure in 
Christ, a life after death, the Divine judgment which 
human life faces, sin’s existence and the need of repent- 
ance and regeneration—are not these things, and all truth 
that one needs to live by, plain on the face of the Scrip- 
tures? No religious teaching has ever reckoned more 
candidly than the teaching of the New Church with the 
fact that Scripture includes in it much history not spirit- 
ually helpful, much outgrown conception of the highest 
truths, much that in the march of truth in its pages must 
be left behind. That teaching is also intent on bearing 
the Christian mind into a higher range of truth—the 
spiritual meaning of Scripture. At the same time it in- 
sists that it finds in the historical and more obvious mean- 
ing an adequate disclosure of what the spiritual life is. 
So much is to be said presently of the deeper sense of 
Scripture (on which, as the new element, emphasis 
naturally goes) that it ought first be made very clear how 
the teaching regards the plain sense of Scripture; the 
‘sense of the letter’ is rich enough in the truth of the 
spiritual life to enable one to live that life. 


Micah vi.8; Psalm cxix.105; John v.39, vi.68. 
Study Excerpt n. 156. 
QUESTION: 


1. Does the fact that Scripture has been a progressive revela- 
tion and thus contains much which we cannot live by, mean that 
the Scriptures will not serve to lead us into the spiritual life? 


Why? 
THE SPIRITUAL SENSE IN SCRIPTURE 


70. The Fact that there is such a Sense. If Scrip- 
ture is a lowermost expression which the Word has found 
with men in this world, there is a body of truth interior 


THE WORD ae 


to Scripture which is like a deeper meaning to it. So the 
teaching of the New Church argues, as we have seen 
(§ 68). In early Christian days and even in Old Testa- 
ment days the same course of reasoning gave rise to the 
feeling that there was a ‘mysterious’ sense in Scripture. 
Attempts to set that meaning forth were extravagant, 
and lacking in method; that, however, should not obscure 
the possibility that there is a deeper meaning in Scripture. 
The teaching of the New Church also offers some minor 
arguments (and some of these are ancient, too) for the 
existence of a deeper sense in Scripture, as that, if many 
a passage is to be worthy of God, it must mean more than 
it does on the face of it; and so on. But the true glory of 
the teaching of the New Church on this head is that the 
spiritual sense of Scripture is no mere argument or theory 
to it. It is a present possession. It is actually set forth. 
The Theological Works are in large part an exposition of 
it, the ‘Arcana’ a word for word exposition of it in 
Genesis and Exodus, the ‘Apocalypse’ (‘Revealed’ and 
‘Explained’ ) a word for word exposition of it in the Book 
of Revelation, “The Summary Exposition of Prophets and 
Psalms’ a more general résumé of the deeper sense of the 
Scriptures indicated in its title. In the course of these 
systematic expositions of the spiritual sense the deeper 
meaning of other Scriptures is given incidentally. 


Study Excerpts nn.152, 157. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How does it follow from our view of Scripture that it has 
a spiritual sense? 

2. Has the fact been surmised before? By whom? 

3. In what works have we expositions of this sense? For what 
parts of Scripture? 


71. An Example of Spiritual Meaning. ‘The spirit- 
ual sense is in all things of the Word, and in every single 
particular of it. ‘This cannot be seen better than by 
example” (S$.9). Only statement of such a meaning, 
and extended statement, would persuade us of a number 


80 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


of things of which we should want to be sure. We should 
want to make sure that this deeper meaning is not the 
more or less fanciful result of ‘“‘allegorical interpreta- 
tion’ of Scripture, which, even though it showed spiritual 
insight at times, is baseless, and rightly discredited; it is 
concerned really only with the obvious Scripture, to which 
it attaches “higher meanings.’’ Swedenborg’s statement 
of a deeper meaning gets at a body of truth beyond the 
Scripture, which is an actual interior content in it. We 
also want to know whether this deeper sense is open to 
consistent and verifiable interpretation; extended state- 
ment of it throughout Scripture shows that it is. Above 
all we feel that if such a sense is actually arrived at, it 
must have a value for life, and lay open to us the ways 
of the spiritual life and especially of human regeneration. 
This that sense does, as it is set out in the Theological 


Works. 
Study Excerpts nn. 158, 159, 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What are some of the things we expect of a spiritual sense 
of Scripture? 

2. Is an interpretation of a deeper sense identical with what 
has been called “allegorical interpretation” ? 


3. Is Scripture such a “ladder” as is described in Excerpt 
aed 


72. How Lodged in Scripture. It is rightly de- 
manded that any ‘deeper sense’ of Scripture be not read 
into it. It will help us to see that this is not done, if we 
consider how such a meaning could be lodged in the 
Scriptures as they formed. ‘The Bible was the slow crea- 
tion of the Divine mind, which worked toward it in dis- 
cipline of the Hebrews, in guidance of their history, 
through spokesmen in prophets, and by the supreme 
revelation of itself in the Lord. Not only the purpose 
which God had for the Jews, but the purpose He has for 
all peoples, and the truth He has for all, were back of 
what they understood of His purpose and grasped of His 


THE WORD $1 


truth. What came to be written, embodied His greater 
purposes, His thoughts higher than their thoughts. It 
answered and corresponded to His higher intention and 
meaning. He purposed, for instance, the spiritual life, 
or the kingdom of heaven, but they put Canaan or a life 
with Him in Canaan for their goal—so their promised 
land has come to represent our promised life. Their land 
also had its detailed significances (impressed on it by 
early spiritual civilizations which saw the world of spirit 
mirrored in the world of nature (cf. § 63; Psalm i)). 
Again, their history was a representation of Divine pur- 
pose, the story of the winning or forfeiture of the land of 
Canaan becoming on a deeper reading the story of the 
winning or loss of the spiritual life. Still again, Biblical 
language offered a vocabulary as spiritually meaningful 
as the land. Done in these scenes, woven of these events, 
and written in these words, Scripture served the Divine 
mind like an extended parable. It served the Divine 
mind to say not only what the human mind could then 
bear, but what It would say later, laying up its whole 
meaning in Scripture by the correspondence which exists 
between a higher and a lower way of conveying the same 
essential thought. The deeper sense was involved in 
Scripture, then, as the Bible formed, by the same creative 
working of higher in lower, of spiritual in natural, by 
which the world of the spirit is involved in the whole of 
natural existence. ‘This connection or creative relation 
is called ‘correspondence’ in the ‘Theological Works. 
‘Correspondence’ may be defined as the appearance of 
what is inward or of what belongs on a higher level of 
existence in what is outward or on a lower level of exis- 
tence, and its re-presentation there, like the appearance 
and re-presentation of a purpose of friendliness in the 
warm clasp of the hand and the light of the eye. 


Study Excerpts nn.160, 161, 157: 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Say how the deeper meaning of Scripture is not read in now, 
but was lodged in the Scriptures as they formed. 


82 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


2. Name three bodies of spiritually significant material which 
have been built into the Scripture. 


73. Some Distinctions. The different books of the 
Bible are marked by a surprising variety of literary com- 
position. ‘The style of even two prophetic writers, like 
Isaiah and Nahum, is in marked contrast. There is one 
style, however, which can be predicated of every book of 
the Bible which has a deeper meaning. ‘That is “corre- 
spondential’ utterance. But when we take account of 
this general assertion of the teaching of the New Church, 
we ought also to note some distinctions which it points 
out in this comprehensive ‘style.’ Correspondential utter- 
ance, to the person who is seeing in any measure into the 
spiritual meaning of the Scripture, will be more or less 
transparent. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are 
weighted with little ‘sense of the letter’; they were com- 
posed to convey spiritual lessons. ‘hey are an utterance 
more sheerly correspondential than most Scripture. With 
Genesis xii historical happenings begin to be recounted; 
the obvious sense has such substance that it obscures the 
presence of any further meaning. That is, historical 
narrative gives us another style of correspondential utter- 
ance. ‘he prophetic literature, with its elevated utter- 
ance and pictorial presentation of single great truths, 
travels closer to the spiritual meaning, without entering 
onitin words. It offers a third style of correspondential 
utterance. ‘The Psalms employ a mixture of elevated 
diction and colloquial expression, and voice a universal 
religious experience; the Theological Works find in them 
a fourth style of correspondential utterance. We only 
seek to follow those Works in their statement about four 
styles of Scripture; these are not primarily literary styles; 
they are variations in that one style of all spiritually 
significant Scripture—‘correspondential utterance.’ ‘he 
student of the teaching of the New Church ought also to 
appreciate the force of the terms ‘correspondence,’ ‘rep- 
resentative’ and ‘significative’ as these are used of Scrip- 
ture, and the distinctions among them. ‘The force of 


THE WORD 83 


each of these terms is indicated in notes to Excerpt n. 164. 
Study Excerpts nn. 162-164. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. When the teaching speaks of the style of Scripture, what is 


meant? 
2. From this point of view what styles are there? 
3. Distinguish correspondence, representative and significative. 


74, Scriptures with and without a Spiritual Sense. 
The teaching of the New Church does not ascribe a 
spiritual sense such as we have been speaking of,* to all 
the books bound up in the Bible. ‘Those in which it does 
find such a sense are the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel, Kings, the Psalms, and the Prophets, major and 
minor; and in the New Testament, the four Gospels and 
the Book of Revelation. In what books a deeper sense 
exists such as we have described, is ultimately a question 
of fact. It is a matter of the nature of the book. The 
question is open to determination by the methods followed 
in exposition of that sense. One book, approached with 
these methods of interpretation and with due insight, will 
yield such a sense, another will not. ‘The books in the 
Bible without such a sense contributed to the development 
of religion among the Jews, or to the beginnings of 
Christianity. “They will serve the religious life still. At 
the very least they are needed to understand Jewish his- 
tory or Christian beginnings, and other books of the 
Bible. It is also to be reflected that in a book from which 
the spiritual sense is absent there may be an unusual ful- 
ness and aptness of teaching in the obvious and only sense. 
In the Gospels, themselves, for instance, with their added 
wealth of a deeper sense, one cannot match for combined 
scope and compactness the great declaration of Paul, 
“Tn Jesus Christ dwelleth the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily” (Colossians 11.9). Swedenborg keeps for those 
books which have a spiritual sense, and which therefore 





* Continuous, and having to do with the spiritual life. Job has discon- 
nected deeper meanings. S.20. 


84 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


let back in a peculiar way into the very mind of God, the 
designation ‘‘Word of God.” 


Study Excerpts nn. 165, 166. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What books of Scripture have a spiritual sense? Commit 
the list to memory. 

2. What designation is reserved to them in the Theological 
Works? 

3. (For discussion) Has the standing the other books have had 
in Christian thought been lowered at all in this view of the teach- 
ing of the New Church? 


75. Nature of the Spiritual Sense. The Theological 
Works often say* that they cannot present more than a 
thousandth part of the deeper meaning even of a verse 
of Scripture. Not only is the deeper content of Scripture 
inexhaustible. It is also not verbal, as Scripture is. It is 
idea. It is truth. And it is idea and truth of the life of 
the spirit.f It is not only a truth we can state about the 
spiritual life. As we follow the interpretation of the 
deeper meaning of Genesis, we seem often to be tracing a 
psychology of the religious development or experience. 
We are. There is in that sense a psychological descrip- 
tion how the spiritual life comes to be. But strictly the 
spiritual sense is not only truth about this experience, but 
the truth in it, inspiring it, and actively bringing the 
experience to pass. So it is a truth possessed in what is 
going on in him, though he will not know it, by every 
regenerating man (A.10400(3)). It is a truth of which, 
in its own character, we possess ourselves, in fact, only in 
the other-world consciousness (cf. Excerpt n.149). 
Here, in and by the Works of the Lord’s Servant in His 
Second Coming what we have is some statement of it, as 
far as it can be brought into our order of thought and 


words (§§ 1, 78). 





* See especially A.937. 
t Cf. Excerpt n. 159, 


THE WORD 85 


Study Excerpts nn.167, 168. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Is the spiritual sense verbal? ‘Then what is it? 
2. Is it more than truth about our deepest life? What? 


76. Subject of the Spiritual Sense. The deeper con- 
tent of truth in Scripture, which we have been calling 
their spiritual sense, has but one subject, if we will under- 
stand that subject broadly enough—the spiritual life. 
We would expect the Word of God to treat of that theme 
alone. The more obvious meaning of Scripture has the 
same general subject. But where “that sense tells us of 
the spiritual life as it has been disclosed in the history 
of a people, or in the ministry, words and Person of the 
Lord upon earth, the deeper sense takes us into the 
processes and character and laws of that life as an inner 
experience, and as the experience of men anywhere and 
at any time. It is without reference to historical persons, 
events, places. It is the story of how in any human soul 
the spiritual life may spring up, and grow, and become 
its full self at the Lord’s hands. ‘This story may be 
followed, however, in three ways. We may still see the 
spiritual life realized in a people or religious era; and 
when they read the story so, the Theological Works say 
they follow the internal historical sense of Scripture. We 
may read the story as it is realized in any human soul; 
and when they read it so, the Theological Works say 
they follow the spiritual sense (strictly so called). 
Again we may read the story as alone it was ever per- 
fectly fulfilled by any one, in the fulfillment it had in the 
Lord’s inner life on anaiine and what is wonderful, take 
the Scriptures from beginning to end in this sense; and 
when they read the story in this sublime application of it, 
the Theological Works say they are following the celes- 
tial sense of Scripture. We can see how the successive 
apprehensions which the heavens have of the Word of 
God are reflected in these meanings which we can enter 


on here (cf. § 65). 


86 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Study Excerpts nn.169, 148, 149. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Say in your own way what the deeper content of Scripture 
is about. ; 
2. In what applications of it can we follow the deeper sense? 


77. Services of the Spiritual Sense as made Known. 
The spiritual sense is supremely valuable just for itself. 
It sets the spiritual life itself before us, and ministers to 
it. Go even a little way-in a grasp of that sense, espe- 
cially as it lies in the beauty of its coherence in the Scrip- 
tures themselves, and the reality of the spiritual life is 
ungainsayable, its beauty irresistible, and its nature clear. 
There are other values a knowledge of the deeper meaning 
of Scripture has. Because the Scriptures are the record 
of a progressive revelation, and therefore voice some 
ideas and standards which have been left behind (§ 69), 
many Scriptures in their obvious sense have lost force 
for us. [his is true even of direct commandments, as 
on the manner of keeping the Sabbath, an injunction from 
which the Lord Himself departed. Much of the histori- 
cal narrative also is without meaning to our spiritual life 
and needs; so is a great mass of legislation and ecclesiasti- 
cal regulation as in Leviticus. ‘The deeper content of 
truth in all these Scriptures makes them run again with 
the water of life. We can come on a vital truth there 
in the meaning that lies below the surface. The mere 
knowledge that there is such a deeper meaning, even if we 
do not get at that meaning, has its value. It lets us see 
how Scriptures, seemingly without vital meaning for us, 
may still serve, and do, where there is the necessary in- 
sight, as the Word of God. In general, the fact that in 
the books named above (§ 74) there is a deeper meaning 
re-establishes the Scriptures on a new ground as the Word 
of God. 

Study Excerpts nn.170, 171. 

QUESTIONS: 


1. What is the direct service which the spiritual sense has to 
render? 


THE WORD 87 


2. What value has a knowledge of the spiritual sense? 

3. What value has even a knowledge that there is such a 
deeper meaning in Scripture? 

78. Disclosure of the Spiritual Sense: Historical. 
The deeper sense of the Scriptures, lodged in them by 
the Divine mind as they formed, it must seem can be 
uncovered to men only in a further act of revelation 
(§ 63). Disclosure even to the individual must amount 
to revelation (§ 79). Certainly disclosure of the deeper 
content of the Word to the world must be. It must re- 
quire the service of some human agent. Swedenborg, by 
his account, was called to this ofice. He was enabled to 
set forth the deeper content of Scripture to an extent 
which we cannot measure very well (§ 75), and he has 
also put at the disposal of Christian study and insight 
the means of a still wider information in that sense in a 
knowledge of the correspondences which obtain between 
the realities of the spiritual life and the facts and objects 
of this world, and according to which the Scriptures were 
written. In this disclosure, he says, of the deeper mean- 
ing of Scripture, in which human destiny and the very 
being of the Lord alike stand in a new light, the Lord 
has come in the clouds of heaven with power and great 
glory. The event has interpreted the terms of the Lord’s 
promise to return, just as the first coming put its inter- 
pretation on the prophecies of that event. At any rate 
we have not only a prediction in Scripture to satisfy with 
event or development some time; but in the presence in 
the world’s literature of books which purport to be the 
opening of the Word to men in the Lord’s Second Com- 
ing, we have a fact and an occurrence which needs ade- 
quate and fair interpretation. 


Study Excerpts nn.172, 173. 


Consider again Mark xiii and especially the description of the 
manner of the Lord’s Return or manifestation of Himself. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Why must disclosure of a deeper meaning of Scripture be 
itself an act of revelation? 


88 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


2. Where does one find the historical disclosure of the spiritual 
sense made? . 


79. The Disclosure of the Spiritual Sense to the In- 
dividual. It is one thing for the world to have available 
a statement of, and the means of entering more deeply 
on, the spiritual sense of Scripture. It is another for 
the Christian mind to rise into this light and into this 
fresh range of Christian truth. ‘This will come about 
slowly. It includes not only knowing what the Theologi- 
cal Works proffer in statement of the spiritual sense. It 
means a disciple’s insight into that sense. We appreciate 
the conditions on this insight. a) There is a technique, 
so to speak, which one must have and use—namely, some 
knowledge of how the spiritual sense is lodged in the 
letter’s meaning, or some knowledge of the ‘“‘correspon- 
dences”’ between the spiritual life and its symbols in our 
natural existence. b) One must also begin in a grasp of 
the Word’s teaching in its plain meaning, with which 
alone its deeper suggestions and meaning will agree. c) 
One must be seeing some measure of regeneration, or 
seeking the spiritual life in all earnest, for this deeper 
meaning is the truth not only about that life but the truth 
to be found in it (§ 75). A contrary life will never have 
an insight into that truth. ‘There is a disclosure of the 
spiritual sense itself to the follower of the Lord in His 
Second Coming, not only of some knowledge of that 
sense as stated in the Theological Works, which is public 
knowledge indifferently to all readers. 


Study Excerpts nn.174, 157, 190. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. On the basis of the disclosure of the Word’s deeper meaning 
to the world, what further entrance on that sense is to come? 
2. What conditions are there on this development ? 


INTER-RELATIONS, SCRIPTURES AND WorpD 


80. Structural Relation. Further discussion of how 
the Scriptures which we possess and the Word as a whole 


THE WORD 89 


are related, has purposely been put off to this point. We 
have waited to appreciate first what the deeper content of 
the Word, or ‘the spiritual sense,’ is like. Not verbal, 
not truth about the spiritual life so much as it is the truth 
in it, reached only in an insight which goes with the living 
of the spiritual life, this deeper meaning is a body of truth 
of which obviously we need some plain and tangible basis 
and presentation. ‘This is what we have in Scripture, or 
in those books which have any deeper meaning. Scrip- 
ture—which means not the letter, but the sense of the 
letter—bears a three-fold relation to the Word more 
interior to it, or to the higher senses in it. It is like a 
lowermost rung, like a container, like a foundation to 
them. On the basis of the sense of the letter one mounts 
into the higher senses. It gives us that grasp of the Word 
within the limits of our thought on which insight can raise 
itself to meanings beyond. In the second place, only the 
sense of the letter of the Word, done in historical and 
natural symbol, is ample enough mode of expression to 
embrace in it the deeper senses. ‘he deeper senses are 
set forth only in part in any language of exact exposition, 
like the language of the Theological Works; precision 
and immediate view of truth are gained; but the symbol 
interpreted is never exhausted; in Scripture, or in the 
sense of the letter alone one has the ‘containant’ of the 
deeper senses. (Of this there is a striking evidence on 
the face of Scripture in the so-called “pairs of expres- 
sions, one a heart-term, more, the other a thought- 
term.) In the third place, the Scriptures are that lower- 
most expression of truth to our this-world consciousness, 
on which the whole body of truth rests, and on which it 
maintains and erects itself in the human mind, as a 
musician’s abilities will rest back always on elementary 
attainments. The Scriptures are therefore to the Word 
as a whole like a stair-landing, an all-inclusive expression, 
and a foundation. 


John iti.12. 
Study Excerpts nn.175, 176. 


90 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


QUESTIONS: 

1. If we think of the structure of the Word as a whole, what 
part of the structure is the Scripture? 

2. What does it mean to say that the Scripture is ‘basis’ to the 
deeper senses? Distinguish what is meant by calling it ‘foundation’ 
to them. 

3. While the deeper senses may in part be expounded elsewhere, 
where alone are they contained? 

4. What interesting evidence is there on the face of Scripture 
of the two senses within? 


81. Functional Relations. The threefold relation of 
the Scripture to the Word as a whole may be put in an- 
other way, and viewed in another way. We have looked 
at it (§ 80) as it is to be seen in the structure of the 
Word, as we have the Word in our Scriptures. We can 
also look at it as it is to be seen in the functioning of the 
Word in the Scriptures. With all the emphasis which the 
teaching of the New Church puts on the opening of the 
Word in its deeper meaning, let it never be overlooked 
how much the teaching makes of the sense of the letter, 
or the Scriptures as they stand. In them, the teaching 
says, the Word of God is in its fulness, its power and its 
holiness. ‘They are the most remote utterance of the 
Divine mind from its source. ‘They are God’s truth dis- 
played in earthly history, and in our limited thought and 
insight here. But all truth follows in the train of the 
truth which has gone all the way to our time and space 
consciousness in this life. The Word is in its fulness in 
the Scripture. The truth of Scripture is also a truth 
which has reached men in their farthest removal from 
the spiritual life, a truth at work where fallacy has grown 
up, a truth maintaining itself in misconception of it, a 
truth active against sin. It reaches around men’s false 
notions of God Himself, and leads out of them; it enters 
the mental attitude of the sinner, and wins him. The 
Word in the sense of the letter has all power. Again, 
where truth thus dies to reach men, and enters their 
souls as sense and sin distort their conception of it, men 
are bound to feel the utter devotion of an Infinite Love 


THE WORD 91 


trying to enlighten and win them. Truth is on the cross 
in Scripture. The Word in the Scriptures is in its holi- 
ness. Looking at the Scriptures, then, as a truth which 
has entered and still enters the very misconceptions of 
men and their unspiritual life, and that shines in the 
darkness, the teaching of the New Church regards them 
as ‘“‘the Word in its fulness, power and holiness.”’ 


Study Excerpt n.177. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. As the Word reaches us in the Scriptures, and acts on us, 
how can we say the Scriptures are related to it? 
2. Can you give a distinct force to each of the relationships? 


How THE Worp WaAs GIVEN IN THE SCRIPTURES 


82. Introductory. It is not an unpractical question 
how the Word was given which we have in the Scriptures. 
Our answer may very well regulate our whole attitude 
to them, and their usefulness to us. We cannot hope to 
understand the whole fact. As with any activity of the 
Divine life (and the giving of the Word is a creative 
activity, too), we have a process which transcends our 
thought. It has its mysteries, of Divine inspiration, of 
human genius. We have already spoken of the process 
of adapting the Divine truth to the apprehensions of the 
finite mind (§ 65). If we try to see this process a little 
more closely, we shall be at one part of our subject. We 
shall be trying to make out, as far as we can, the higher 
aspect in the giving of the Word. With this, theological 
teaching has primarily to do. But there is a lower side 
to the question, as well. We can also ask how the Scrip- 
tures formed. The composition of them has a history, 
and it can be traced in good part. With this lower side 
of the giving of the Word in the Scriptures, Bible study 
of a number of kinds deals. 


QUESTIONS: 

1. What two sides has the question how the Word was given 
which we have in the Scriptures? 

2. With which side has theological thought to do strictly? 


ae AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 
83. The Upper Side of the Giving of the Word. We 


cannot go far into the profound suggestions which the 
teaching of the New Church makes on how the truth 
spoken by God arrived at the mind of spokesman or 
writer to be set down in the Scriptures. For that is the 
upper side of the giving of the Word. The teaching does 
not pretend to give any answer at all to the question with- 
out taking account of the spiritual world (§ 2). ‘The 
truth which issues from the Divine mind and is embodied 
finally in the Scriptures comes by way of that world. 
Revelation has its channels there. Any thought of ours 
traverses that world; so did the thoughts that came to 
prophet or evangelist. Thought is a form of the influx 
of life. So the teaching of the New Church suggests first 
of all that the Word was given by influx. But so is all 
mental life. So the teaching moves on to add ‘“‘by dicta- 
tion.” This term is easily misunderstood, because tradi- 
tional teaching has confined it to dictation of words. But 
it is used in the teaching of the New Church with a much 
larger meaning, simply the direction given the influx of 
truth. ‘There was an influx of truth directed under Provi- 
dence to this special end—the formation of adequate 
Scriptures for the utterance of God’s Word. This direc- 
tion or dictation on influx can consist in more things than 
can be listed: in the shaping of a conviction, like Peter’s 
(Matthew xvi.16, 17); in the force and undeniable les- 
son of an experience like Hosea’s (Hosea); in the 
guidance of recollection (John xiv.26) ; in the irresistible 
lesson of events (Kings) ; in the original Divine guidance 
of the events later recorded in Scripture (A.1429). In 
other words, what is ‘dictated’ may be a conviction, a 
truth, an interpretation of history, a just conclusion, or it 
may be words, in the sense that a conviction or a thought 
forms vividly and urgently in the very words in which it 
is set down. Behind ‘influx’ and ‘dictation’ is the spiritual 
world, which may also engage consciously in the giving 
of the Word, and so the teaching comes to speak as well 
of ‘angelic mediation’ in the giving of the Word. The 


THE WORD 93 


three terms call for study and for identification in any 
instance of revelation, but in these terms the teaching of 
the New Church makes its answer to the question how 
the Word came to men to be set down by them in Scrip- 
ture. ‘Influx’ is the descent of truth in finite apprehen- 
sion; ‘angelic mediation’ means that unconsciously or 
consciously men and women of the other world served in 
the deliverance of truth to the mind here; and ‘dictation’ 
is the whole Divine guidance of the movement of truth to 
a deposit such as the Scriptures. There are other broad 
suggestions in the Theological Works on this higher side 
of the process of giving the Word, but for these Outlines 
probably enough has been said to sketch the thought of 
the teaching. 


Study Excerpts nn.178-181. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. With what three ideas does the teaching sketch an answer to 
the question how the Word was given which we have in the Scrip- 
tures? 

2. What do you understand by ‘influx,’ ‘dictation,’ ‘angelic 
mediation’? 

3. Does seeing how they have come from the mind of God help 
one to see that the Scriptures are the Word? 


84. The Under Side of the Process of Giving the 
Word. One can also pursue an historical inquiry as well 
as a theological one as to how the Scriptures formed. 
We are then in another field from theology’s field, and 
work with other data. We can ask when a book was 
written, by whom, for what purpose of which he was 
conscious, for whom, on the basis of what existing mate- 
rial, if any, etc. These are all legitimate inquiries, and 
Bible study has made rich and enlightening answers. ‘The 
teaching of the New Church allows all room for these 
studies, and draws on their results. Any theological 
explanation how the Word was given cannot disregard 
established results in this lower field of study. The teach- 
ing of the New Church does not profess to enter this 


94 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


field; in the Theological Works, much is proffered, never- 
theless, for study and consideration in this field of histori- 
cal research. ‘The embodiment in our Scriptures of an 
earlier Scripture (see Excerpt n. 142) is one of the most 
striking of these propositions. “The gradual compilation 
of the laws in the “books of Moses” after Moses’s time, 
a conviction of modern Bible study, is a fact appreciated 
in the Theological Works. 


Study Excerpt n, 182. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. In what field of thought does inquiry about the historical 
composition of the Scriptures fall? 

2. How are results in this field of study related to theological 
explanation how the Word was given? 


85. The Giving of the Word a Two-World Move- 
ment. If we consider carefully what the teaching of the 
New Church has to say of how the Word was given 
(§ 83), it will be plain that its answer is good for the 
giving of the Word at any time, and in any form, like the 
Ancient Word. To get the story of how it was given in 
the Scriptures in which we possess it, we must add to this 
theological explanation what historical study can tell us 
of the coming into existence of the books of Scripture. 
But when we have done this, we shall find that we have 
for the process of revelation a prolonged two-world 
movement, which bears an unending amount of study. 
The Word comes from the Divine mind by way of the 
unseen world, and by way of realizations of the spiritual 
life there. Over centuries it seeks embodiment in ap- 
propriate Scriptures here, which only come into the form 
in which we have them now, gradually, and with traceable 
re-vision, and among a people and in a land and in the 
course of a history which lend themselves peculiarly to 
the purpose. In this process, too, not abstract ideas, let 
us remind ourselves, are conveyed, and certainly not mere 
words are spoken, but a people learns in spiritual disci- 
pline to know God, and sets down the revelation which 


THE WORD 95 


comes to them, and which reaches a climax in the Person 
and words of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘The story of the 
giving of our Word must be gathered then from processes 
of the spiritual world, and from the history of thought 
and event among a people in this world. 


QUESTION: 


1. What must go into anything like an adequate account of how 
the Word was given which we have in the Scriptures? 


How THE WorpD SERVES 


86. Introductory. See the Word as the teaching of 
the New Church does, and we shall find many more pow- 
ers attaching to it and services rendered by it than we 
should detect otherwise. In coming to the subject of 
the Word, we intimated (§ 61) how full the service of 
the Word is to the spiritual life, how it discloses that life 
to us in the first place, how it urges to it, and educates in 
it. We turn now to consider some of the principal ways 
in which the Word serves. 


87. Asa Vehicle of Divine and Heavenly Influences. 
Appreciate that we have in the Scriptures a Word which 
has traversed the heavens and one never detached from 
the Mind of its Author, and it is obvious that the Scrip- 
tures are filled with influences both Divine and heavenly. 
They serve as the vehicle of such influences. We are 
somewhat prone to think of the Scriptures as a body of 
information and a manual of doctrine; they are so much 
more. They are also the living embodiment of the forces 
of a higher life and of the regenerating influences of the 
Spirit of God. Having in them the mind of the heavens, 
they associate the reader and doer of the Word with those 
in heaven where “‘the Word is settled forever.’ The asso- 
ciation is accomplished in impulse, aspiration and, in a 
measure, in thought. Having in them the Lord’s own mind 
and spirit, the Scriptures can unite a man with the Lord 
Himself, in some sense of the Divine presence, in invigora- 
tion of some purpose, or in conveying to him some hope. 


96 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Either experience is but slightly in one’s conscious appre- 
ciation. Here, however, is one of the primary services 
of the Scriptures, and many a reader who brings away no 
definite ideas from what he has read, does bring away a 
lightened spirit, or a re-inforced purpose. ‘The Scrip- 
tures (for the teaching ascribes this service to the sense 
of the letter of the Word) are a medium binding human 
life here to human life in the heavens, and a body of 
influence making for the attainment of the heavenly life. 


For a picture and instance of this service of the Scriptures con- 
sider Luke xxiv. 13-35, especially 32. 


Study Excerpt n, 183, 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Of what influences is the Scripture a channel? Why? 
2. How does one benefit by these influences? 


88. To Reveal the Spiritual Life. The Word as we 
have it in the Scriptures is also a revelation of the 
spiritual life. It not only discloses the fact that there is 
such a life; it exhibits this life and the nature of it. It 
shows us that life, as men have been aroused to it, and 
attracted by it, as they have struggled to have it, as they 
have known it or fallen short of it. Especially does it 
depict that life lived without flaw by the Lord. In this 
service the spiritual sense shares, putting the spiritual 
life before us as an inner experience (§ 77). When we 
say that the Word discloses the spiritual life to us, more- 
over, there are included all the realities of the spirit. It 
discloses God to us, Invisible, as the Ruler of nature, and 
as a factor in history: and Visible, the Heavenly Father 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It lets us see the tireless Spirit 
of God in search of man. It shows us men in disturbed 
search for their whole life. It uncovers an eternal destiny 
to the human spirit. 


John v1.39. 
Study Excerpts nn.184, 185. 


THE WORD an 


QUESTION: 


1. What more do the Scriptures do than describe the spiritual 
life? Do they give us formula, description, or instance? Sub- 
stantiate your thought from Scripture. 


89. Asa Means to Dissemination of the Light of the 
Spirit. This particular service of the Scriptures becomes 
apparent certainly only in the view of them which the 
teaching of the New Church takes. The thought is 
not only that the Scriptures bring the light of truth to 
those who possess them. But, gaining for that light a 
definite expression on earth, they increase its range else- 
where. This dissemination of light 1s made, we must 
understand, by the Word itself, or that body of truth the 
activity of which enlightens every man that comes into 
the world. The Scriptures themselves do not so much 
convey that light. Giving it concentrated expression, 
they lead to increased diffusion of it elsewhere, by unseen 
paths of the world of the spirit. 


John i.9. 
Study Excerpt n. 186. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Of what enlightenment do the Scriptures serve as the means 
besides that directly conveyed by them? 
2. How? 


90. As a Source of Systematic Teaching about the 
Spiritual Life. One of the most important services of 
the Word is to yield explicit guidance to the spiritual life. 
If the Scriptures did not also yield definite teaching about 
the spiritual life, capable of formulation, its other offices 
would be left fairly ineffectual. It furnishes a growing 
and systematic teaching. Indeed, the point is made in the 
Doctrine of the New Church, that the Word cannot be 
understood without doctrine, or the systematizing of its 
teaching. The Doctrine of the New Church regards the 
Scripture as its own formal source. 

This explicit guidance or teaching is to be gathered, 


98 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


the teaching of the New Church says, from the sense of 
the letter of the Word, or from the Scriptures as they 
stand. Even the Christian layman who is to arrive at 
any mature insight and at thought for himself on religion, 
at least takes the doctrine in which he has been brought 
up, to the Word to see if it answers to Scripture, and 
how; or, better, he fashions the teaching, or his under- 
standing of his duties and life as a Christian, from the 
Scriptures. The Christian theologian finds this his secure 
and rich procedure. ‘The Scriptures, as a revelation over 
centuries of Divine activity and of the life of man with 
God, and of this at its height in the Lord’s life, offer 
the “raw material” for theological teaching. It is their 
disclosures which theology must formulate, with any helps 
from other knowledge, systematizing their thought as a 
whole. The teaching of the New Church was so formu- 
lated. Scripture was brought together on a subject, 
weighed, and interpreted, and the upshot of its teaching 
stated. ‘Apparent truth’ was discriminated from 
‘genuine’ (§ 68). All was grasped and stated in the light 
of the mind and the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. One 
other distinction in material was made; it was to the 
books which have a spiritual sense that the Revelator 
primarily turned. [hat was natural for an obvious 
reason; in the Epistles, e. g., from which he quotes indeed, 
one already has a theological formulation of the truths 
of the Gospel, while in the Word at large those truths 
offer themselves for formulation. 


Study Excerpts nn. 187-189. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How more explicitly do the Scriptures serve the spiritual life 
than has yet been indicated ? 

2. Is it only the theologian who will gather his systematized 
view of the Christian life from the Scriptures ? 

3. How are the Scriptures used in the formulation of a religious 
doctrine? By detached texts? How? 


91. The Spiritual Sense, and the Formulation of 
Doctrine. It is quite the distinguishing feature of the 


THE WORD 99 


teaching of the New Church that it was gathered from 
the sense of the letter of the Word in the light of its 
deeper sense. ‘The spiritual sense lets one see the sense 
of the letter in a new light. But chiefly it contributes in 
two ways to the elaboration of any teaching. It will 
contribute detail. It will reinforce the teaching of the 
letter. Perhaps neither service can be illustrated more 
plainly than from the doctrine that the Lord’s Person 
on earth saw a great change take place in it on earth, the 
finite humanity receding in it, and a Divine Humanity 
emerging in its place, a change called ‘‘glorification” in 
the Gospel. The Gospels represent the Lord as praying 
for this glorification of His Person with God’s own self 
(John xvii.5), and otherwise confront the reader with 
Enemecnerabiactes Gut one sias toventer von, the deeper 
sense of Scripture and on the story of His inner life 
which it tells (§ 76) to trace the process of glorification, 
and appreciate the full glory of it. That story brings a 
mass of detail into the general thought of the Lord’s 
glorification which one will gain from the sense of the 
letter. It amplifies the view of the transfiguring change 
in the Lord, and makes it such a plain reality, that the 
relatively slight allusions to the fact in the Gospels grow 
into a doctrine of great depth and extent. The teaching 
of the New Church is doctrine drawn from the Scripture 
in the light of the spiritual sense in this way. Hence it 
speaks of itself at times as the doctrine of the spiritual 
sense, 


Study Excerpts n. 190. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How is the spiritual sense available when one gathers his 
doctrine from the sense of the letter? 

2. Why does the teaching of the New Church speak of itself as 
the doctrine of the spiritual sense ? 


THE Lorp THE WorRD 


92. The Lord the Word. The relation of the Word 
to its Author is uniquely intimate. His heart and His _ 


100 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


mind seek in it the human mind and heart (§ 87). He 
is the Word. It begins in Him. Originally, and when 
we make our way into it, it is His mind. He is the 
wisdom contained in it. This is one meaning of the as- 
sertion, ‘‘the Lord is the Word.” But then it is about 
Him, too. He is the Figure to Whom the Old Testament 
moves, and on Whom the New Testament rests. In the 
deeper sense of either Testament He is the One Divine 
Figure. Again, He is the Word in that the Word was 
fulfilled in Him Incarnate. This is to say much more 
than that predictions about Him in the Old Testament 
came true. The whole order of life which the Scriptures 
disclose, in whatever sense, or the whole body of truth 
which is the Word, was lived out flawlessly in His life 
on earth (§ 76). A fourth significance can be given the 
assertion. What the Word holds of truth, is truth only 
when held in Him. His spirit and adoration of Him are 
part and parcel of Christian truth. In His light we grasp 
Scripture. His “I say unto you”’ is the criterion of what 
the Scriptures themselves teach, and of what they have 
yet to teach. 


John i.1; v.39; Luke xxiv.44, 32; Psalm 1.4; Revelation 


Six10} 
Study Excerpts nn. 191, 192. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. How many things does the declaration, “The Lord is the 
Word,’ mean to you? 

2. How differently are the Scriptures and an ordinary book 
related to the minds of their authors? 


In REVIEW 


93. Review. The teaching about the Word is in a case 
by itself in one respect. All the teaching about the 
spiritual life, we were told, is to be derived from the 
Scriptures, and established by that more obvious sense of 
the Word which they are (cf. Excerpt n.187). But 


when the Scriptures themselves become the subject of the 


THE WORD 101 


teaching, the teaching about them, we ought to note, is 
not derived from what they say about themselves. For 
that is very little. It must be gathered not from what 
they say about themselves, but from what they are. Nor 
are they looked at by themselves. ‘hey are considered 
in the light of the fact that there is a spiritual world, of 
which the Word is essentially the order of life. ‘The 
teaching begins by thinking of the Word, therefore, as 
Divine truth itself. “(hat means all the Divine in the act 
of proceeding of which we can have any knowledge. It 
is the Divine mind uttering itself. This conception then 
determines all the rest of the teaching about the Word, 
and about the Scriptures, in which we have the Word. It 
is a body of truth adapted to a variety of apprehension 
of it in the other world and here. ‘There is involved in 
any final utterance of it to us here, therefore, a manifold 
deeper meaning. ‘lo this deeper meaning the Scriptures 
are like a floor, container, and foundation; they are that 
Word in its fulness, and power, and holiness, in fact. So 
the Scriptures come to serve as a vehicle of Divine and 
heavenly influences; as a growing disclosure of the 
spiritual life; as the basis of a wider-spreading light of 
the spirit; and as the source of.express guidance to the 
human spirit. Uttered by the Lord and the living product 
of His mind, returning to Him when really grasped, the 
Word is the Lord. 


Study §§ 60-93. Sum up the thought in them in some such 
summary as the above. Study Excerpts nn.138-192. Go over 
the Questions appended.to §§ 60-92. 





THE LORD 


atest 
OP a ees 


‘ » te see 
Ti Cp 
te: taal 





Ll GOD-THE LORD 
94. Introductory. Both by his possibilities and by his 


needs, the human being is urged into vital relation with 
the Divine. The spiritual life to which he feels called, 
and for the knowledge of which he turns to the Word, is 
to be had only of the Lord. With this general connection 
among our main topics (§ 3), we go now to consider 
the third. We shall proceed from the mere intimation 
of the thought of God to the human mind, to the revela- 
tion of Him in the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall think of 
God as He is in Himself, so far as we can; as God mani- 
fest in history and especially in the life and Person of the 
Lord Jesus Christ; and as the Holy Spirit, or as active 
in the regeneration of men. The Trinity in the Divine 
(§§ 134, 135) naturally gives us these three subdivisions 
of our thought. 


Excerpt n.7. 
QUESTION: 


1. Consider again the practical relations in thought among our 
three main headings. 


THE IDEA OF GoD 
95. The Idea of God Important. At the center, 


obviously, of any religious teaching, will be its idea of 
God; the Supreme Being will be its supreme thought. 
What can any teaching say about Providence, for ex- 
ample, without reflecting what its idea of God 1s? 
Human responsibility, too, will be differently conceived 
as God is differently conceived. Of still greater impor- 
tance is the place of the idea of God in human life. Life 
105 


106 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


with God in it is at least a different existence, as alone it 
is real human existence to the believer, from life to which 
God is unreal; and as the influential thought of Him is 
worthier, the life is nobler. The teaching of the New 
Church has much to say both of the importance of the 
idea of God in any system of religious thought, and of 
the importance of one’s idea of God to one’s life. On the 
latter idea it thinks our life really turns. If, for example, 
the energies in nature are what we regard as God, what 
intelligible communion can our life have with the Divine? 
How can we be raised above our natural selves? In 
fact, the teaching of the New Church makes bold to say 
that one’s place in the world of the spirit is determined 
by the idea of God which is at work in one’s life. Wit- 
ness the men in the Parable of the Talents. The men of 
two and five talents thought of God as a God Who 
sought to accomplish something, and Who invited human 
co-operation. [he man of one talent regarded God as 
jealous of His own and “‘demanding,” and was as careful 
himself not to run any risk with God. Each was judged, 
as he was influenced and even moulded, by his idea. 


Consider Matthew xxv.14-30; Psalm cxxxv.15-18, lxv.2; 
Jeremiah ix.23, 24, 


Study Excerpts nn.193, 194. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Illustrate how the idea of God is central in any system of 
religious thought. 
2. Show by an instance how important the idea is in a human 


life. 


96. How the Idea of God Arises: An Inborn Sug- 
gestion. Historical study traces the appearance of the 
idea of God in the race’s thought. It seeks to say when 
the idea first arose, in what form, and impelled by what 
feeling, as, for instance, by fear before unknown forces. 
Religious teaching concerns itself more with the sources 
of the idea in the spirit of man, or in the self-revealing 


activity of God. ‘The teaching of the New Church de- 


THE LORD 107 


clares that there is an intimation to each human soul that 
God is. Can we have all our life from God (§ 5) with 
no impress on this life of its origin? ‘There is, stronger 
or feebler, in every human spirit an instinctive feeling for 
a Supreme Being and Will. ‘The teaching argues that 
the universal existence of religion involves the presence 
of this idea in the human soul. The Supreme Being may 
be crudely and erroneously conceived, or denied for lack, 
so it may seem, of evidence of His existence, but some 
sense of His existence there is. This inborn suggestion 
is not an idea thought out, at all, but the merest suggestion 
that somewhere, in some being, life is unlimited and all 
that in us it struggles to be. The conveying of this 
suggestion to the innermost soul is part of the activity of 
the light of the spirit (§ 62); for there is no idea of God 
without revelation. ‘To this inner intimation, too, what 
we call outward revelation has to speak, in order to mean 
anything. Yet, vague as the intimation of God’s existence 
is, the teaching of the New Church makes out a cluster 
of suggestions in it—not only the suggestion that God 
is, but that, like life from Him, He has unity, that He is 
near (all prayer takes this for granted), and that He is 
like us or the fountain of human existence, i. e., Man, and 
still other suggestions. Theology only gives a connected 
and thoughtful account of these intimated ideas. 


Consider how Scripture and the Lord assume in humanity a 
belief in God’s existence. “They do not think for the first time to 
convey such a belief. Turn to Genesis i.1; the first of the Ten 
and of the Two Commandments; John xiv.1. Also consider the 
force of Isaiah x1.21 in its context; the implications in Acts 
xvii. 22-31; Acts xiv.17; reflect that something in the soul is 
spoken to by nature, Psalm xix. 1. 


Study Excerpts nn. 195-197, 
QUESTIONS: 


How can there be an inborn suggestion in us that God is? 
What is the nature of this “innate idea”? 

What suggestions about God seem wrapped up in it? 
What is the relation of revelation to this idea? Of theology? 


a aera Nelle 


108 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


97. How the Idea of God Arises: The Outward 
Revelation. In revelation which comes to us by external 
means, like a Scripture, these intimations to the soul about 
God receive plain and full expression. Again an histori- 
cal inquiry is possible here, whether nature itself did not 
first serve to give body to the intimations to the soul, and 
whether earlier revelations in Scriptures did not leave in 
the human mind various developments of the idea of 
God, which seem now part of the instinctive idea. ‘The 
Theological Works have several historical suggestions of 
the sort to make (cf. S.115). But we have in mind now 
how the Scriptures which we have serve to maintain and 
educate the idea of God inus. Through-out they take the 
existence of God for granted. Only in an occasional 
assertion do they propose His existence, or His unity, or 
His kinship with the human being. But their total effect 
is that God is, that He is one, and that He is all which 
makes humanness, or is Man. ‘They put in words, and 
develop in reflection on them, the suggestions we have 
found written on the heart (§ 96). 


Consider again how the supreme utterances of Scripture do not 
say that God is, but speaking to instinctive belief seek to inform 
it. On His omnipresence, Psalm cxxxix and Jonah; on His love 
Hosea; John itt.16. Find other Scriptures, that He is one, etc. 


Study Excerpts nn.138, 67, 139. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. State more fully now the relations of the revelation which 
comes by a channel to us outward, to the inborn thought for God. 

2. Would the inborn thought for God attain anything like due 
value to our thought, or due influence on our lives, without 
express revelation? 


98. Inborn Suggestion and Outward Revelation 
Meet. Any revelation which speaks to us from outside 
us, like a Scripture, we should reflect was once an inward 
conviction with others, which was set down by them, The 
existence and the nature of God kept coming home to the 
Jews, in event (like their deliverance from Egypt), in 


THE LORD 109 


the experience and work of a leader or prophet, or in 
their own tragic or joyful experience as a people. God 
revealed Himself to them in their lives, and the idea of 
God was broached to them often actually long before it 
was recorded by them in any Scripture. ‘The same idea 
comes to us now however, so far as it comes in Scripture, 
not as a compelling inner conviction, but as a fact of 
human experience in the past. Any outwardly conveyed 
idea of God comes to us as so much information. It is a 
fact like any other fact. It has once again to become liv- 
ing conviction, affecting the life. For this it needs com- 
bination with the innate idea of God. ‘The inward sense 
that there is a God, relied in, spiritualizes what otherwise 
is information, or an idea which both good and bad can 
entertain. On the other hand, the explicit revelation of 
the idea of God which one has in Scripture and in any 
formulation of their teaching, builds out the inward 
sense that there is a God. It gives it definiteness, and 
content. Until then it is vague, not influential, likely to 
die out, and liable to superstition. 


Think how Peter’s confession of the Christ was created by some 
deep work of the Spirit of God in him in combination with his 
knowledge of the Lord (Matthew xvi.17) in the flesh. Reflect 
what happened to the information the Samaritans had from their 
townswoman about the Lord when for themselves they met Him 


(John iv.42). 
Study Excerpt n.198. 
QUESTION: 


1. Complete your discussion now of the role respectively of 
inborn suggestion and outward revelation in our thought of God. 


Gop More As HE Is IN His Own BEING 


99. Limitations on our Thought. Inevitably the 
Divine Being will transcend our highest insights. ‘That 
the Infinite is, we can know; indeed the thought of a life 
underived and without beginnings is implied in our recog- 
nition of the “‘finite” ; the finite exists only in being marked 


110 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


off against the limitless. What the Infinite is in itself, 
however, we can say only by indirection. Our ideas of 
God as He is in Himself we have to gather from mani- 
festations of Him in His world and in His Word. The 
world bears inarticulate witness to Him; in the Word He 
has been reflected in Jewish history, and shown Himself 
in the Person and life of the Lord Jesus Christ. We 
remind ourselves, however, that, even when He has 
shown Himself in Jesus Christ, it is still true that we can- 
not directly regard the Divine itself. “There are depths 
in His Being which He cannot uncover to finite sight. It 
remains true that no man has seen God at any time; the 
Son still reveals Him to those who know Him. No 
matter, then, how well informed our thought of God may 
grow, we have always to recognize that in Himself He 
transcends human comprehension infinitely; He is un- 
searchable, and a Being of unresolvable mystery. In the 
absence of a feeling for this fact truth and awe alike 
are lost. 


Read Exodus xxxii.12-23; Isaiah xl., verse 12 on; Matthew 
X12 37) ONO axle Oe 


Study Excerpts nn.199, 200. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What limitation is human thought under when it addresses 
itself to the subject of the being of God? 
2. By what ways do we come to any idea of God as He is in 


Himself ? 


100. Thinkable. Underived Life. The teaching of 
the New Church finds God’s infinite Being reflected in 
the inexhaustible vitality in the coming and going of all 
things—trees, civilizations, physical worlds. What we 
see and know all about us is a coming to life and a passing 
out of existence. We predicate of this unending process 
as the only adequate support and ground it can have, a 
life that is endless, or better, a life which is life in itself. 
God is very Being, as distinguished from coming to be, 
and from Him, or out of the depths of His being, all 


THE LORD 111 


things and creatures arise. Trace our life to a preceding 
generation, or backward, or from physical to immaterial 
or inward, we assume at length a life which ts underived 
from any source, but is life in itself. Is not God this life? 


Consider the name by which God came to Moses, Exodus iii. 14; 
the consciousness the Lord had of this life, John viii.58; also 
John v.26. 


Study Excerpt n.201. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. In what first way can we think of God even as He is in 


Himself ? 
2. How do we reach this thought of Him? 


101. Thinkable. Infinite Love and Wisdom. We 
can go on to a similar generality about the nature of the 
Infinite Being. Once more we think up from the highest 
life we know. ‘That is the human life at its best, or a 
life which above all else is love and intelligence. We say 
that all that our life is, that it is in perfection with God 
its source. If humanity is capable of a self-disregarding 
love, intent on serving, that manner of love in its infinite 
original is God’s and God’s nature, indeed is God. If 
one of the most distinctive features of human life is 
appreciation of truth, then wisdom in its perfection is 
God’s. Whatever nature marks our truest life, whatever 
its essence, at least that nature and essence are His. We 
are human beings with a limited endowment of the life 
which makes us human beings; He is Man, the Infinite 
original of all the substance and form of human character. 
When, therefore, we ask what kind of Being Infinite 
Being is, and feel that we are shut up to analogy from the 
highest life we know, we answer in terms of humanity’s 
best, a Being of Love and Wisdom, or a Person. We 
mean love and wisdom, too, not as traits of that Being, 
but as the substance and form of Infinite Being. God is 
not just loving and wise, among other things; He is Love, 
He is Wisdom, and in this high sense (not in a gross or 
physical one) Man or Person. 


112 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Consider the force of the Lord’s reference to God as Father; 
also 1 John iv.16; Matthew vii.7-11; Isaiah xl1.12 on; Psalm 
xciv.9, 10; the gross anthropomorphism of primitive Scriptures, 
a reflection still of the thought that humanness is God’s. 


Study Excerpts nn.202, 203. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What can we say of the kind of being Infinite Being is? 
2. How do we reach this idea? 

3. What basis has it? ' 

4. How do we mean the statement that God is Man? 


102. God the Creator. The Creative Impulse. Nec- 
essarily we have in life at its source all creative energy. 
Life is exactly what does issue in creation. Yet not 
mechanically. There is in this infinite life a love which 
desires the existence of other beings and of worlds, and 
there is the wisdom to conceive and fashion them and 
. direct their coming into existence. Creation is a delib- 
erate and a willed activity. The impulse to it is to be 
found in the nature of God, and especially in the nature 
of the love which God is. The Divine love seeks others 
than itself on which to spend itself, it desires others with 
whom it can be united, and it longs to bless them from 
itself forever. This love therefore prompted creation, in 
the view of the teaching of the New Church. Part of 
the argument is in what we have already felt (§ 100) 
must be the nature of God, and in this sublime analysis of 
love; the teaching of the New Church also reckons with 
the goal of creation, which is the objective of such a love 
as this, and this goal it can treat not as a theoretic possi- 
bility only, but as an actual achievement in the world of 
the spirit; it has before its eyes heavens which imply such 
a love as we have described as the impulse to creative 
activity. | 

Psalm c.3, Genesis i.1, John i.1-3, Revelation iv.11 (reading 
here more literally ‘because of Thy will,’ instead of ‘for Thy 
pleasure’). 


Study Excerpts nn.204, 205. 


THE LORD 113 
QUESTIONS: 


1, What activity must one ascribe to life itself? 

2. Where does one find the impulse to creation ? 

3. Re-state in your own words the analysis of Divine Love made 
in Excerpt n.205. 

4. What other reasons does the teaching give for ascribing 
creation to Infinite Love? 


103. The General Method of Creation. Religious 
thought is obviously concerned to know whether a Being 
of infinite love and intelligence brought the world to be. 
It feels that the universe is no blind growth. It comes 
from God. And it comes at the prompting of an infinite 
love, indeed as the effort of that love to realize itself. 
Religious teaching has far more concern with these aspects 
of creation, its origin and the why of it, than with the way 
of it. A philosophy of the universe, as a spiritual-natural 
world, will seek to know something more of the way of 
creation; and science will take the story up as the methods 
by which things came into existence, come finally under 
scientific observation. Failure to note boundaries to one 
kind of inquiry and another, has made possible otherwise 
baseless disputes about the conflict of religion and science 
on the subject. ‘The teaching of the New Church has 
never read literally the story of creation in Genesis (for 
reasons see Excerptn.142). The first chapter of Genesis 
speaks great religious truths—that God is the origin and 
maker of all things, that they came step by step from 
His hand, and that humanity is His goal. So much, 
religious teaching has to say of the method of creation: 
the coming to be of things was gradual, and the method 
then as now was growth. The religious teaching of the 
New Church also keeps itself out of the province of 
philosophical teaching—though it has its philosophical 
view of the how of creation (see Excerpt n.206). In 
that philosophical view the world, spiritual and natural, 
has emerged out of the substance of the Infinite Being, 
and become other than God, marked off from His Being 
by its finiteness and by a capacity of re-action and self- 


114. AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


activity. Even of this great process the philosophical 
teaching offers only what it calls a ‘sciagraph’ or ‘shadow- 
gram.’ 


Genesis i. and ii. 1-4. 
Study Excerpts nn. 206, 207; 204. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Where is the interest and province of religious teaching on 
the question how things came to be? 

2, What other branches of thought grapple with the question? 
What are their provinces? 

3. Why has the teaching of the New Church never read 
Genesis i as a scientific account of the physical creation? What is 
it if it is not that? See § 34. 


104. The Goal of Creation. Beyond the conviction 
that God, as a loving Will and wise Thought, is behind 
and in all the processes in the up-keep of things, religious 
teaching entertains its next most significant conviction 
about the goal of creation. To what end did God fashion 
the universe and create human life in it? What goal is 
His love intent on, and does His wisdom make its way 
to? This matters for living. The creature is concerned 
to know the Creator’s desire and purpose. The conscious 
spirit can conceivably be invited and expected to co- 
operate towards the goal. The commanding objective 
toward which the Lord on earth labored, and toward 
which the Father worked theretofore, and which the Lord 
bade men seek above all things, He called the kingdom of 
God or of heaven. That kingdom He spoke of as spring- 
ing up in the present, but it also was future in His thought, 
to be fully realized and perfected in the heavens. It is a 
society of redeemed men and women. Especially as 
realized not transiently here or on another planet, but in 
the heavens, this is the one sufficient goal of creation in 
the view of the teaching of the New Church. Nothing 
less than a heaven indefinitely recruited from the human 
race in all habitations of the race and in all ages can 
answer to and satisfy the infinite love of God. 


THE LORD 115 


Mark i.14, 15; Matthew v.1-12; vi.33; any teaching of the 
Lord’s on the kingdom. 


Study Excerpt n.208. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What is probably the most practical interest of religious 
teaching with creation? 

2. Why? 

3. What is the goal of creation? 


105. Providence as the Second Activity of the 
Divine itself. Some of its Aspects. The One underived 
Life must constantly preserve as well as create. It is a 
second immeasurable activity of God as He is in Him- 
self that He maintains and directs His creation. ‘This is 
Providence. The teaching of the New Church therefore 
sees Providence as the work of the Life from which all 
things arise, or as a government of all things from within. 
It is not a government from above and outside, which 
tends to be occasional intervention. It is a direction of 
all things from the springs of life within, which is a con- 
stant activity. It is also minute. It is the working out 
of the order of life, which in the first place is the order 
of the Divine life, but which is involved in all things 
through their derivation from that Life. ‘That order is 
worked out in physical nature; it is to be worked out in 
history, in civilization, in human lives and society. Provi- 
dence has its special field in the moral and spiritual life 
of mankind, but must deal with all else, the natural en- 
vironment, the forces of history, the bearing of genera- 
tion on generation, in order to shape the moral and 
_ spiritual life which is its prime concern. In that special 
field it has different modes of action. ‘There is much 
which God provides, and seeks, and brings about. ‘There 
is much which is less than He craves, yet good. There 
is much that He puts up with in the room He gives to 
human freedom. There is much waiting on His part in 
the non-moral and non-spiritual before He can disclose 
the meanings of life to men. There is active prevention 


116 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


of inordinate and profitless disorder. Identify these 
modes of Providential activity in the terms of Excerpt 
n.210. The inward, inescapable guidance which the 
Source of life has over all forms of life is not unvaried. 


Isaiah x1.25 to end; Psalm xxiii; Amos v.8; such a national 
hymn as Psalm Ixxviii (where the ‘parable’ (verse 2) is the 
Providence to be found in Israel’s history) ; Matthew v.45, vi.24 
to end; x.30; Genesis xlv.5. 


Study Excerpts nn.209, 210; 205. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What second great activity is to be ascribed to the Divine 
as it is in itself? 

2. How in general shall we think of this activity? 

3. State some of its aspects, like active provision, toleration, etc. 


106. The Goal of Providence. The goal of God’s 
providence will be that of His creative activity. What 
He brings things into existence for, that He will guide 
things towards. ‘This is His Kingdom, initiated here and 
perfected and eternal in the heavens; or a heaven re- 
cruited from the human race to eternity (§ 104). This 
goal, it is true, is not invariably attained by a human life; 
the world we call “infernal” is the sum of humanity’s 
failure to co-operate with Providence. ‘There is no effort 
to prevent failure (short of over-riding human free-will) 
which God does not make. But the existence of a whole 
world of evil which God cannot have purposed, is the 
chief problem in the thought of Providence. ‘The prob- 
lem is most acute seen in connection with what God does 
purpose; yet the one light on it falls also from the goal 
He has in view. What He seeks is a heaven, we have _ 
said, from the human race, or a society of men and 
women who have freely sought the life He offers; it is not 
an imposed goal, but one for which they cast a vote and 
on which they stake a faith. If God is to have such a 
goal as a redeemed society freely responding to His will 
and gladly engaged in carrying it out, He must give free 
moral agency to His creatures, and that means the possi- 


THE LORD 117 


bility of defiance to Him, as alone it makes possible the 
real enjoyment of Him. On the problem of evil from 
another angle see § 55. 


Study Excerpts nn.211, 212. 


QUESTIONS: 
1. What is the goal of Providence? 
2. Is it always attained? Why? 


3. Does God do all to prevent human failure? Does man do 
all to fulfill his part? 


107. Laws on Providence. If Providence means that 
the very order of life which exists in the Divine Being is 
being realized in all things from Him, and is yet to be 
realized in all its beauty and variety (§ 105), this is a 
development which has its laws. ‘he Infinite Wisdom 
directing Providence means laws; the goal, attained by 
certain ways, means laws. Providence is not arbitrary, 
or capricious, or changeful. Swedenborg’s treatise on 
“Divine Providence” is for the most part a statement of 
ascertainable laws by which Providence acts. 1. Provi- 
dence has respect always to human free will and responsi- 
bility. 2. It leaves the human being a share even in that 
grave conflict which it wages with its one enemy, evil. 
3. It proceeds for the most part by undiscernible ways, 
so that its current activity shall not be detected by us. 
4. Again, the guidance it offers the human spirit must be 
of the sort we have in the Scriptures, which we can freely 
adopt or reject. 5. Providence gives no realizing vision 
of the spiritual life to any creature unless he can be (not 
‘‘will be”) kept in that life loyally to the end. ‘There are 
other laws formulated in ‘‘Divine Providence,” all of 
which Providence, in its wisdom, has set itself to observe. 
They do not mean limitation; they fashion the goal of 
Providence, and are the ways of attaining it. Some ap- 
preciation of them will increase our reliance in Provi- 
dence, and make our co-operation with it more eager and 
more open-eyed. 


Study Excerpts nn.213, 214. 


118 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


QUESTIONS: 


1. With what idea of Providence would you contrast the 
thought that it has its laws? 

2. In your own words state some of these laws, so far as they 
can be formulated by us. 

3. From what prime law do many of the others seem to flow? 

4, (For discussion): What values do you see in having some 
appreciation, not only of the fact that there are laws on Provi- 
dence, but what these laws are? 


108. Attributes of God as He is in Himself. We go 
back once more to the thought of God as underived life, 
or life in its sources. Wherever we have any form of life 
(and the whole world is alive from the Spirit of God), 
that form of life stands in connection with its source in 
the Infinite Being. The Inscrutable Divine is everywhere 
present ‘by life from Him: Perverted, 1. €.j,turnedeto 
wrong ends, life is still from Him. He is, as theology 
says, ‘omnipresent. A Being of infinite intelligence, He 
cannot be everywhere present, without being all-knowing. 
Of disorder, evil, sin, He is aware through the resistance 
which they set up to the order of life which His own Being 
pursues. He is ‘omniscient.’ Has He all power? We 
are the most likely to have difficulty conceiving His ‘omni- 
potence.’ We have just reflected (§ 106) that the goal 
He sets Himself is not invariably attained, at least within 
the reach of our time-governed thought. We shall find 
it necessary to say carefully what we mean by all power. 
All power can be conceived as the power to push anything 
at all to any conclusion at all. But is this power? Does 
it not include capacity for self-contradiction, which is 
weakness, not power? Is the Lord not ‘omnipotent’ in 
the sense that He has all power, and from Him is all 
power, to effect what is true and good? This orderly 
might, set on the right, is omnipotence. It is invariably 
up-building, not brute force, but sensitive, and thinking. 
If a moiety of such power, lent the human will, is not 
exerted, or is misused, by the human will, when God 
does all things to induce it to use it, does that detract 


THE LORD 119 


from Divine omnipotence? Immeasurable attributes of 
‘omnipresence,’ ‘omniscience’ and ‘omnipotence’ attach to 
the very Being of God, Whose essence is love and wisdom, 
and more nearly to the infinite wisdom to which His love 
commits all that it does. 


Jeremiah xxiii.23, 24; Psalm cxxxix.8; Isaiah x1.12-31; Amos 
ix.2; Matthew xxviii. 18. 


Study Excerpt n.215. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Say how you can see the Divine is present everywhere. 

2. How can God be aware of evil or anything foreign to His 
own nature? 

3. What do you mean by ‘all power’? 

4. Why should we assign these great attributes especially or 
more directly to the Infinite Wisdom of God than to His infiaity 
generally? 


REVIEW 


109. In Review, §§ 99-108. God as He is in Himself. 
We have sought first to make as real to our thought as 
possible God as He is, more, in Himself. In this aspect 
He transcends our highest insights at once, but there is 
much that we can say, by analogy at least from life as we 
know it; namely, that He is life itself, or life underived 
from any source, and at least that highest form of life 
which we know in human personality. Creation as an 
activity of life is His work, and the preservation of 
things is, especially the moral government of human 
souls. Each of these activities has its orderly procedure, 
from the order of the Divine life impressed on creation. 
The two activities have the same Divine goal in view: a 
“heaven from the human race.’ To the very Being of 
God there belong universal presence, awareness of all 
things, and all constructive power. Review §§ 99-108, 
with the Scripture, Excerpts and Questions assigned to 
them. | 


120 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Gop MANIFEST: THE LorD THE REDEEMER 


110. Introductory. What God is in Himself has 
become plainest of all to the human mind in the life He 
lived in the world in Jesus Christ. In thinking now of 
the Lord the Redeemer, we go from God reflected in 
Word and history and nature to God living a life of His 
own in men’s sight. While we speak of Him in this 
respect as God manifest, let us guard ourselves against 
thinking that He has not, been manifested, too, in the 
other ways named. He has shown Himself in history. 
Civilizations which have observed none of His will have 
fallen away; they have been revived in some form of 
worship of Him; men with commanding insights from 
Him have shaped historical tendencies. It takes religious 
insight to see these manifestations of God in history; the 
Old Testament is the richest interpretation under such 
insight that any people’s history ever received; perhaps 
none was so open to such interpretation as the history of 
the Hebrews. Besides the manifestation of God in their 
history, there was a lower order of occasional manifesta- 
tion to them. Jehovah made Himself felt and known 
through some being of the spiritual world whom He filled 
with His spirit and by whom He spoke His will. For 
this manifestation there was required of men not religious 
insight but an opening of the spirit’s eyes. But still there 
is a marked difference between these manifestations and 
the personal manifestation of Himself in Jesus Christ. 
In the tendencies and events of history, and in theophany, 
the Lord appeared more remotely; in Jesus Christ He 
stepped into history in a Person and life of His own. 
He came under the eyes of men, and under the touch of 
their hands, to the marvel of those who came to feel it. 
Under our heading ‘God Manifest” we think next of 
God come in Jesus Christ. 


Read Joshua’s farewell address to the Tribes, for its interpreta- 
tion of God’s activity in their history, Joshua xxiv. On theophany 
by angel, consider Joshua v.13-15, Judges vi.11-24. See the 


THE LORD 121 


reference to both God’s activity in Hebrew history and to guidance 
by angelic messenger: Isaiah 1xiii.9, 


Study Excerpt n.216. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Short of coming in Jesus Christ, how is God manifest? 
2. For what manner of manifestation of Himself do we use 
the word ‘“‘manifest”’ in its fullest sense, however? 


3. Why? 


111. God Came in Jesus Christ. As the Word. On 
the subject of the Lord, His Person and life, more than 
elsewhere even, we can hope to sketch the teaching of 
the New Church only in the broadest outline. ‘There will 
be little space for argument or detail. 

God, Who actively prosecutes creation, and bears the 
burden of the preservation of all things, assumed in the 
Lord Jesus Christ one distinguishable activity more. In 
Him He also began living out a human life of His own. 
As ever, Infinite love prompted the step;* and the order 
of His own Being made it possible. God is Life itself, 
and gives existence to countless human: beings; shal! He 
be unablet Himself to traverse the course of ‘becoming’ ? 
Must not human lives emerge out of the infinite possibility 
in Him of living a human life of His own in the world? 
The world yet to be, and humanity yet-to be, are a limit- 
less potentiality in Him. So was a life of His own in the 
world. He would not stand here in the fulness of His 
Being, to be sure. Appearing in the finite world and 
under finite limitation means the contrary. He came by 
a projection of His life in the nature and consciousness 
of the Christ. However distinct the consciousness of 
Christ might be (and distinct it was, plainly, John viii.17, 
18), the Divine being was not separated; God cannot be 
left out of or cut off from any manifestation of Himself. 
But He did come in a further and fuller manifestation of 
Himself as He was already manifest in the life of the 





WO Jone 1.1617, 
+ Cf. Psalm xciv.9. 


122 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


heavens and as He already was in His nature within the 
bounds of finite response. As the teaching of the New 
Church phrases it, He came as the Divine truth, i. e., in 
further declaration of His utterable nature and being. 
Or, as the Gospel of John puts it, not God in the unutter- 
able fulness of His being, but the Word it was that was 
made flesh. ‘The Divine mind, already expressed in a 
humanity more nearly its own in the heavens, and seizable 
by human faculty, this it was that was born into a further 
and last human nature, life and Person here. 


Consider on the general insistence that God came in Jesus Christ 
such a prediction as Isaiah ix.6 and such a deliverance of the Lord’s 
own as John xiv.10, 11, or x.30, or vili.58. On the thought that 
He came as the Word any passage speaking of Him as the Son, 
or John i. 14. 


Study Excerpts nn.217-219. 
QUESTIONS: 

1. State more fully in your own words the general truth that in 
the Lord Jesus Christ God came. 

2. Put as well as you can the thought that God came as the 
Word in the Lord. 


3. How do the Scriptures help you see the larger truth, and 
the stricter idea? 


112. In Actual Assumption of a Human Nature. 
The way in which God came in Jesus Christ is ordinarily 
referred to as incarnation. ‘The teaching of the New 
Church speaks of it habitually as the assumption of a 
human nature. This was by the ordinary gate of birth 
into our life. The teaching comes minded to accept all 
the facts of record in the New Testament about the 
Lord’s birth. Out of the Divine life all forms of life 
are derived (§ 102), and with some influx from that life 
they are quickened every moment of their existence. ‘The 
life which was Christ’s was seeded out of this universal 
source of life, ‘begotten by the power of the Highest.’ 
This was done directly without the agency of a human 
father; for had that intervened, only a permanently finite 


THE LORD 123 


human being could have resulted as always. God Him- 
self could not be said to have entered on a human life of 
His own, with the capacity of His infinity. But of Mary 
He did assume a human and finite nature, such as we all 
have. He followed all the laws He Himself set on the 
coming of a life into existence, with that variation only 
which enabled His own Being to be or at least to become 
continuous with the Person, mind and nature assumed. 
He followed the order prescribed for this step. In Jesus 
Christ, therefore, a humanity grew, gradually and freely 
to become aware of its unique relation to God Himself, 
and become a Divine Humanity. 


Read the Birth Stories in Matthew and Luke. Consider the 
Lord’s thought of His origin as contrasted with the idea that He 
was ‘the carpenter’s son,’ John viii.14, 23. 


Study Excerpts nn.217, 220, 221. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. How did God come in Jesus Christ? Contrast the teaching 
with the view that He simply inspired His Spirit into a man. 

2. Why, in the view of the teaching of the New Church, was 
the Lord’s life directly fathered by the Divine itself? 

3. Was the order of life ignored in this step? 


113. The Need for God to Come, and the Double 
Object of His Coming. We can believe that God can 
always have had in view such a full revelation of Himself 
as He made in Jesus Christ. The step would have been 
taken some time in the whole revelation of Himself to 
men. But there existed at the time a crisis which called 
for the step. We can argue to this conviction in the light 
of the Lord’s own sayings about the conditions in the 
spiritual life of the race, and in the light of the urgency 
which His mission had to Him (cf. John xii.47). His- 
tory does not uncover the conditions which His insight 
saw. ‘The teaching of the New Church also argues to 
critical conditions at the end of the Jewish Church from 
those which the Seer saw prevailing at the close of the 
first Christian era. The spiritual life was low. It was 


124 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


dying out, in fact. An accumulation of moral evil, and 
of spiritual lethargy and blindness, was in the way of 
men’s so much as seeing what the spiritual life is, let alone 
their living it. “There was a world of moral disorder and 
perversity to deliver them from, and a new order of 
things to initiate and to present to them vividly and win- 
ningly. ‘his sketches at once the need for the step of 
‘incarnation when it came, and the double object it would 
have. God had to come into the arena in a life of His 
own, giving Him part in men’s hard conditions, and 
contact with those conditions. ‘There in Christ He had 
two things to accomplish. He had a world-change in 
moral and spiritual environment to effect. And He had 
the spiritual life to restore, by bringing it to light, first 
of all, peerlessly in the Christ. We have then this world- 
task to consider, which is called ‘redemption,’ and also 
how in Christ’s Person the true human life was shown 
man in the emergence in Him of the Divine Humanity 
(called His ‘glorification’). 


Study Excerpts nn.222, 223. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What crisis called for the Incarnation? 

2. What leads us to believe there was such a crisis? 

3. What objects did the step have? 

4. Relate this step with God’s interest in the preservation of 
what He has made (Excerpt n.205). 

5. Relate the step to the indirect manifestation of Himself in 
event, in nature, and by ‘angel’; was the latter manifestation in- 
sufficient for humanity’s needs? See especially Excerpt n.245. 


THE WorRK OF REDEMPTION 


114. The Need for Redemption. We have to visual- 
ize as far as we can the world-condition which the Lord 
faced. By the forces of heredity (cf. Excerpt n.66) and 
the momentum which evil had acquired, human life was 
disordered as no historical judgment could realize then 


THE LORD 125 


or does now. How contrary to the indifferent idea of 
most were John Baptist’s judgment and the Lord’s of 
mankind’s spiritual condition! ‘The actual condition re- 
vealed itself, too, in the prey which human life was 
(Mark 1.23-27) to evil influence. The teaching of the 
New Church paints the condition in vivid fashion in the 
light of its interpretation of the race’s spiritual history 
(A .2243), and of a recurrence, in subtler forms, of those 
conditions in the conditions on which the Seer looked out 
in the Christendom of his day. ‘There was an accumu- 
lated mass of evil, superstition, degraded thought, and 
distortion of the Word which had to be unmasked, and 
overcome. As always the spiritual world enters into the 
thought of the teaching (§ 2). ‘The battle was with 
unseen evil, and with the whole world of disorder, which 
is hell (§ 54). Right influence from beyond failed to 
reach men in the disorder there and here. The par-. 
ticular form of New Testament thought about demoniac 
possession belonged to that age, but the underlying fact 
that human life was in the grip ot unseen evil the Lord 
plainly recognized, and was content to speak of it in the 
terms of the popular view of ‘“‘possession.”’ Only in the 
thought that the influence of the world of evil, seen and 
unseen, was getting the upperhand of the race, can one 
begin to give adequate force to such sayings of the Lord’s 
as that the prince of this world was cast out by His work, 
that He saw Satan fall as lightning from heaven, and 
others, or to the fact of His own mighty struggles with 
evil. Humanity’s very ability to choose right rather than 
wrong, was jeopardized by the overweight of unseen evil, 
and the contending spheres of evil and good in human 
a had to be put in equipoise again before the human 
will, 


In addition to such Gospel passages as those just referred to 
consider Isaiah lix.16, with its context; Matthew iii.7-12; Luke 
xix LO; 


Study Excerpts nn.224, 225. 


126 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Where can we get any indications what the conditions were 
which called for the work of ‘redemption’? 

2. How was the other world involved in those conditions? 

3. To what acute result for men? 


115. The Threefold Task of Redemption. (a) The 
Defeat of the Hells. When the work of ‘redemption’ is 
regarded a little more closely, it becomes three-fold. A 
necessary first effort on the part of the Redeemer was 
to stay the forces of evil in human life, indeed to bring 
them under a control to which they had not yet submitted. 
He met evil as it reached Him in His own human nature; 
as He became aware of it and of its opposition to Him in 
the scribes and Pharisees and others who opposed Him; 
and as He discerned it (even back of Peter) in the hells 
from which in all cases it emerged. His conflict was even 
with the seated tendency of an evil generation, with per- 
verse ecclesiastical institutions, and with standards once 
good, but now inadequate (Matthew v.20). In the 
moral struggle in which He was involved from the first, 
the Lord met, saw into, unmasked and defeated the mass 
of evil in human life, not only as it existed and set itself 
against Him in men and institutions here, but as it existed 
and arrayed itself against Him in the unseen world. He 
subdued the hells, and so redeemed man. And this by no 
magical exertion of Divine power, but, as we shall see, 
by a very real and prolonged conflict in His Person. He 
did not take evil away, or its influence, but laid them both 
under control, to insure men an equal and possible moral 
struggle and a victory like His and in repetition of His. 


Go slowly over Luke xxii.31-34; John vii. 19, 20; viii.44; Luke 
x.18; John xiv.30e; also consider that according to Mark evil 
spirits were the first to recognize the Christ for what He was, 
i.24; on the last point above, Revelation iii.21, 


Study Excerpts nn.226, 223. 
QUESTIONS: 
1. What had to be the first effort in redemption? 


THE LORD 127 
2. Why? 


3. In what incidents and sayings in the Gospels do you see this 
first phase of the three phases of ‘redemption’ reflected ? 


116. (b) The Marshalling of the Forces of Truth 
and Right. ‘he reduction of the forces of evil and per- 
versity in human life to an increased Divine control was 
only the first and a relatively negative step in ‘redemp- 
tion.’ The increased control could come only by a fresh 
insight into the spiritual needs of the race, by the erec- 
tion of a higher standard of living and thought, by the 
utterance of a more commanding truth, in short, by mar- 
shalling anew and with fresh force the influences of the 
good and true in life. This the Lord did quite obviously 
in throwing a more penetrating light on men’s evils, by 
revealing in word and deed what the spiritual life is, or 
the “whole” human life, and by speaking a Gospel which, 
in repentance and forgivenesss, led from sin to life. This 
second phase of the work of the Lord in the world also 
reached into the spiritual world. The forces of right and 
of light which that world possessed were marshalled and 
enthroned in influence with men again adequately to meet 
evil influence, if the human will so wished. The Redeemer 
re-ordered the very heavens, as the teaching of the New 
Church puts it. 


Consider Luke x.17-20; Matthew iv.11 (in context) ; John 
xii.35, 36; the implications in Matthew xvi. 19, xviii. 18. 


Study Excerpts nn.226 (223, 222). 
QUESTIONS: 


1, Put in your own way the second part of the work of re- 
demption. 

2. How was the other world involved in this? 

3. Discuss the relations between the first and second aspects of 
the work of redemption. 


117. (c) The Inauguration of the Spiritual Life 
Anew on Earth. The Lord’s work on earth would have 
fallen short of its point, and been incomplete, had it not 
gone on to setting afoot again among men the spiritual 


128 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


life which was dying out. In Christianity that life was 
revived. This revival the Lord spoke of as the kingdom 
which was at hand. It constituted His news, or Gospel. 
It is the ‘church’ (§ 45) the institution of which the 
teaching of the New Church declares was the third part 
of redemption. Freedom to see and seek the spiritual life 
was humanity’s again as a result of the Lord’s work, but 
beyond that there had come to the world by Him a more 
abundant gift of that life. He advanced it to new possi- 
bilities, and fulness, and scope. It was revived with a 
prospering unseen background to speed it. ‘These three 
works, then—the subjugation of the hells, the re-ordering 
of the heavens, the revival of the spiritual life after a 
higher standard—make up the very real work of the 
Master in His life on earth—the ‘redemption.’ 


John v.39, 40; x.10; Mark i.14, 15; Matthew v.13, 14; 
xxviil. 19, 20. 


Study Excerpts nn.226 (223, 222). 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Say in your own words what the third part of redemption 
was. 

2. Did it build on the other parts? 

3. What sayings of the Lord’s are about this third part of re- 
demption? 


118. Redemption, and Salvation. Review. ‘This 
work of a very real struggle with evil, and of victory over 
it, bringing in a new religious era for the world, was the 
Master’s life-work, in the theological summary of it. His 
teaching, His healings, His personal influence, His inner 
growth, the life we read about and love, all were poured 
into this work. It was the salvation of the race at this 
historical juncture. ‘The spiritual life would else have 
been lost to men. But we have to note a distinction here. 
Redemption did not automatically assure men salvation, 
or the spiritual life. It did make possible the successful 
pursuit of that life. The Lord’s struggles and victory 
did not relieve men of struggle and effort on their part 


THE LORD 129 


to have the spiritual life. It put men in a position to win 
a similar struggle and victory, and so to have this life. 
It was not individual salvation, which is regeneration; it 
was an historical redemption, the fruits of it, in a re- 
established equipoise between good and evil influences, 
redounding to the race. ‘This world-redemption can be 
and is repeated in miniature in any faithful follower of 
the Lord. In the view of this paragraph, let the student 
review now §§ 114-F18. 


Revelation iii.21, John xvi.33, Philippians iv.13, 2 Corin- 


thians x11.9; Ephesians vi.10 on. 


QUESTIONS: 

1. Was redemption salvation to the race? In what way? 

2. Is it the salvation of the individual? Why? 

3. What does it effect for the individual life? 

4. How does it even enter or re-appear in the individual life? 

5. The Lord’s life on earth can be distributed into many 
activities, as a dramatic and colorful human occurrence; in your 
own words say what His work was, as theological thought would 
characterize it. 


THE PERSON OF THE REDEEMER 
119. The Person of the Redeemer. In General. The 


consideration of the work of the Lord on earth will 
already have told us something about His Person. We 
might have considered His Person first to see His Work 
in the light of it, but we have reserved the more difficult 
teaching about His Person for study second. With what 
manner of Person do the records in the Gospels present 
us? There is a legitimate inquiry into the greater his- 
torical value, or value for history, of one Gospel over 
another, like that of John, which includes a large measure 
of philosophical interpretation of the Person of the Lord; 
but this inquiry we need not make here for the very 
general picture of the Christ which we seek. ‘he general 
picture of the Christ in the Gospels is sure—there is 
in Him our humanity, and there is in Him as never in 
any of us God Himself. We need to see these two out- 


130 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


standing elements of His Person clearly and in some ful- 
ness, and then see the personal problem (to call it so) 
with which the Lord was confronted, in addition to the 
world-task which He faced in redemption. Personal 
problem and world-task had to be met and solved in one 
and the same life and moment; and we shall note as we 
go along the intimate connections between what took 
place in His Person and His world-work of redemption. 


Look through Mark or Matthew, or recall Gospel scenes, inci- 
dents and sayings generally, and note how the Lord’s Person 
appears a man like us but uniquely conscious of God in Him, 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why do we not need to stop to assess the historical value of 
one Gospel and another for our picture of the Lord’s Person? 
2. What two outstanding features has His Person? 


120. The Reality of the Lord’s Humanity. The 
reality of the Lord’s humanity is plain on the face of the 
Gospel record: He saw the stages of human growth and 
development which we do (cf. His birth; also Luke 
11.40, 52). He feels fatigue (Mark iv.38). He craves 
human understanding and sympathy (John vi.67). The 
more commonplace and the loftier evidences of human- 
ness are there. Let us single out two more. One is His 
liability to moral struggle. His human nature was not 
unreal in not feeling any inclination to evil (though that 
evil might be too scrupulously seen for us to see it); or 
in not having to master mistaken idea. He had to resist 
being diverted to ruinous ways of pursuing His mission 
(Matthew iv.1-11). He could feel the force of the ap- 
pearance that God Himself was gone out of His life 
(Matthew xxvit.46). Actual human nature, with its 
liability to moral struggle, was His. A second evidence 
of His true humanity stands in contrast with this. He 
was not only left to make out His mission and in some 
struggle to keep to it, but He could seek God and make 
His way to God (John xvi.28). This is the loftiest 
capacity of the human being. Let the student turn back 


THE LORD 131 


to our discussion of the constitution of the human being 
(§ 5). The two powers, which the teaching calls ‘liberty’ 
and ‘rationality,’ which are the human being’s capacity 
of re-action to life, and are inmostly lodged in him, were 
the Lord’s also. In the exercise of these powers of His 
own He made His way to a realization of the Divine in 
Him such as none of us can attain. A realization of the 
Divine came to Him which can come to no finite man be- 
cause of the initial residence of the Divine in Him in a 
way unique with Him (§ 112). ‘This other element in 
His nature we turn to next. But let us be sure that His 
human nature was in no way reduced from what ours is, 
but was a full and actual humanity. 


In addition to the Scriptures referred to in the paragraph above, 
consider John xi.35; xiv.28e; Mark xiii.32; Hebrews iv.15. 


Study Excerpts nn.228-230. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Give an evidence of the reality of the Lord’s humanity. 

2. Cite a Scripture which means liability to moral struggle in 
Him; a Scripture which means limitation of knowledge in Him; 
a Scripture which means a highest human capacity, but a human 
capacity. 


121. The Presence of the Divine in the Humanity. 
God came in the Lord, we have said (§ 111). Deity was 
in Him as in no other life; instead of a making over of a 
measure of life as there is to a finite being, there was 
in the Lord continuity from the Divine Being and life 
without measure (John 111.34, v.26). This the Gospel 
not only says about the Lord. It pictures Him as Him- 
self conscious of a unique relation to God. It records 
many stirring words of His to that effect, from His boy- 
hood sense of having to be about His Father’s business 
(Luke 11.49) to His manhood’s sense of union with God 
(John x.30). The Divine, in its first influences, was in 
Him from the outset (Lukei.35). If there was Divinity 
in Him it was in His Person as He stood among men. 
And if the Divine was to appear in Him in greater ful- 


132 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


ness, it would be in that humanity which was His, or 
which He was. In other words, there never was in the 
Lord’s Person a mere finite humanity (except to the cold 
dissection of theological thought), but a Divine Humanity 
was what was growing from the first. Having come from 
God, He was at once going to God again. ‘The very 
physical organization of His life, or His body, was 
touched from the first by the Divine (Luke 1.35); and 
inmostly in Him, in the human powers of re-acting to 
good and truth, there was the Divine capacity to be good 
and truth. This, too, was His power, by which in the 
unfolding of His nature He could “‘go to God.” 


In addition to the Scriptures referred to just above, consider’ 


the Prolog to the Fourth Gospel; John v.19. 
Study Excerpts nn.231, 232. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. How differently was the Divine in Christ from its presence 
in us? 
2. What evidences have we of that fact? 


3. Was the Divine in full possession of the humanity at the 
first? 
4. But was even His physical body without Its influence? 


122. The Task Resulting. The presence in the 
Lord’s Person of a maturing finite humanity and an 
emerging Divine Humanity spelled a personal task for 
Him. There was a work for Him to do in the world, 
that of ‘redemption’ (§ 113). In the confines of His 
own Being He had an immediate problem. At one time 
His consciousness would have the finite and infirm human- 
ity, with its outlook and tendencies, pressing on it, and 
absorbing it; and again He would be aware of the appeal 
of the possible Divine Humanity. He was thrown into 
conflict between the two. He had to come clear in the 
one, and of the other. He had to identify Himself with 
His highest possibilities, and strike to realize them. “His 
Father’s business,” ‘‘the work of Him that sent Him,” 
doing always as the Father in Him prompted, making His 


THE LORD lan 


way to the Divine from which His life and Person sprang, 
this became His study and effort. We can see how it 
must have been the concern of the unreported years in 
Nazareth. ‘The Gospels are full, however, despite their 
silence on those years, of references to the Lord’s con- 
sciousness and performance of this inner task. He spoke 
of this whole inner experience as being ‘glorified,’ ‘glori- 
fied with God’s own self’ (John xvit.5), and He prays 
for it with all His soul. The Evangelists refer to it on 
their own account. ‘[raditional Christian teaching has 
made strangely little of these references; the teaching of 
the New Church makes much of them, and is unique in 
this respect in its view of the Lord’s life. We must turn 
now to a closer appreciation of this stirring and profound 
change in the Lord’s Person; it puts Him before us anew, 
and the immeasurable alteration in His Person is the 
promise of our measurable regeneration. 


Consider John xiti.31, 32, xvii.1, 5, xii.28; Luke xxiv.26. 
Study Excerpts nn:233, 234, 235 (229). 


QUESTIONS: 

1. What personal problem early confronted the Lord? 

2. Under what particular term is it prominently named by 
Him? 

3. In what other terms do you find the Gospels speaking of it? 


THE Lorp’s GLORIFICATION 


123. What it is. We have noted in general what the 
Lord’s glorification would consist in (§ 122). Abstractly 
it is describable readily enough in a variety of ways. 
The Scriptures refer to it, as we have said, more espe- 
cially as ‘being glorified,’ and their conception of it 1s that 
of the Lord’s being made over with God’s own self (John 
xvil.5). In the commonest phrasing of the Theological 
Works, it meant putting off the nature from the mother 
Mary and putting on the Divine Humanity from the 
Father. Or, again, they speak of it as the unition of the 
Divine and the Human in the Lord’s Person (n.230). 


134 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


It is a progressive change in the Lord’s Person, much in 
His consciousness, but going on in the substance of His 
being, at the outset of which He is a Jew, and marked 
by the necessities and liabilities of the finite, but on the 
conclusion of which He stands, in His Risen Person, the 
sheer embodiment, in a peerless or Divine Humanity, of 
the Divine. To see this transformation more vividly and 
definitely one has to enter with some insight into some 
specific experience in the Lord’s life in which He is trans- 
cending the merely human in Him, and realizing the 
Divine human. The indications are (Matthew iv) that 
He was trained to the prevailing conception of the mis- 
sion of the Messiah. To this there attached the idea 
that the Messiah’s kingdom would need to be an earthly 
kingdom, at least in part. It would operate partly by the 
employment of political force. ‘The idea was congenial 
to the hereditary Jewish nature and mentality which was 
part of His life and consciousness. But He penetrated 
the fallacy and the dominion of self in the thought. He 
moved out of that idea into a vision of the methods of 
love which alone would establish a kingdom beyond this 
world and in it, too. We have in such an experience 
exactly what the teaching calls the “putting off of the 
human nature,” “the putting on of the Divine human.” 
Many more could be cited, especially as one entered on 
that story of His glorification which is to be read in the 
deepest sense of Scripture. But in whatever instance, 
we should find that the Lord’s glorification consisted in 
His reaching in the human nature and in His historical 
Person to the Divine within Him, and showing it forth, 
and thus making His life, nature and Person Divine 
Human. 

Consider John ti.4; Mark iti.31-35; Matthew xxii.41-46; John 
xiv.10, 11; Matthew xxvii. 18. 


Study Excerpts nn.233-235 (229). 


QUESTIONS: 
1. In what did the change in the Lord’s Person called ‘glori- 
fication’ consist? 


THE LORD ie 


2. Give an instance of this change. 

3. How does the teaching of the New Church most commonly 
describe and sum up the change that took place in the Lord’s 
Person? 


124. Two States of Consciousness in the Glorifica- 
tion. One of the conspicuous features of the change 
called ‘glorification’ in the Lord was an alternation of 
state and outlook in Him. 

Necessarily two states of consciousness would attend 
on ‘glorification.’ Either the Lord was more aware of 
the finite human nature in Him, its suggestions, and 
frailties, its inherited inclination to disordered life, its 
liability to being governed by the unspiritual, and then 
His consciousness was one of struggle, and despair, and 
humiliation. Or again He rose into a Divine strength 
over the weaknesses of the human nature, He was moved 
purely and irresistibly by one exalted passion—that of 
saving men—, His mind enjoyed a direct apprehension 
of the Divine will, and then His state was one of peace, 
of a sense of unity with God’s own self, and of all power. 
The one state is called ‘the state of glorification’ in the 
Theological Works; the other, ‘the state of humiliation.’ 
It is to be noted that both states attend on the process of 
‘glorification.’ Utterances of the Lord’s obviously come 
now from this state of consciousness, and again from 
the other. The prayer in which God seems far off is 
spoken out of a state of ‘humiliation,’ or of absorption 
in the finite nature. The Glorified Lord still prays, as the 
regenerating human being does; but the prayer which is 
at a distance from God disappears. 


Consider the Scriptures cited in the Excerpts. 
Study Excerpts nn.236, 237. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. What two states of consciousness attend on the great change 
that goes on in the Lord’s Person? 

2. Do you distinguish ‘the state of glorification’ and ‘the process 
of glorification’? How? 


136 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


3. Why should there be these two states? 
4. Give a saying of the Lord’s spoken out of each state. 


125. The Inner Combats by which Glorification 
Came. Actual human nature is a temptible nature. ‘Ihe 
assumption of our nature by God in Christ, allowed evil 
to come with appeal to the consciousness of the Lord. 
He was to see it for what it was, He had to rise above 
its appeal and falsity, and steadily win the victory over it. 
We have noted the public aspect of this really titanic 
struggle of the Lord’s, as in the redemption He defeated 
the mass of disorder and evil which we call ‘hell’ (§ 115). 
This wide-reaching victory which benefitted the whole 
race was not, however, to be won independently of a 
private victory first of all in Himself. In His own nature, 
and in the utter devotion of it to God’s will, He met evil 
and moral disorder in a struggle which will remain incon- 
ceivable to us always. By the use of a striking imagery 
He once sought to tell His disciples of the extent and 
character of these inner combats (Matthew iv:1-11). 
There are other references in the Gospels to His *tempta- 
tion-combats,’ as our translations of the Theological 
Works have called them. Again in the deepest sense of 
Scripture we have our most immediate glimpse into the 
struggles, which culminated in Gethsemane and on the 
Cross. Such a Psalm as the 22nd and such a prophetic 
utterance as Isaiah 53 let us know even on the face of 
them how much the deeper meaning may have to tell us 
of the Lord’s struggles of soul. The faultless humanity 
which was His, was no endowment with which He came: 
it was an achievement by way of hard and bitter and yet 
joyous struggle. It was the fruit of personal conflict with 
moral evil and chaos. He was without sin, but by a 
mighty victory, and not by being immune to the appeal of 
evil. ‘The active means to glorification for Him as to 
regeneration for us was the steady discernment of all that 
spoils and mars human life and character, and the steady 
triumph over it. 


THE LORD 137 


‘For in that He himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able 
to succour them that are tempted’ (Hebrews ii.18). 


Also consider Hebrews ii.10, 16-18; iv.15; Luke iv.1-13 (and 
the suggestion in the last verse) ; Luke xxii.28; John xii.27; any 
record of the agony in Gethsemane, and of the Crucifixion; Revela- 
tion 11.21; John viii.46; xiv. 30e. 


Study Excerpts nn.238, 239, 240. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Why would struggle with evil come within the Lord’s ex- 
perience ? 

2. What part did moral struggle have in His ‘glorification’? 

3. (For discussion): While sinlessness is beyond finite possi- 
bility, is such a sinlessnesss as the Lord’s stirring? Why? 


126. Other General Features of the Lord’s Glorifica- 
tion. The Lord’s glorification was gradual. Its analogy 
to human regeneration would tell us so (§ 31); like 
regeneration it was a structural change, for character and 
the spiritual person are a structure in a substance of their 
own. References of the Lord’s to His glorification indi- 
cate that it proceeded by stages (John xii.28). It wasa 
life-long inner change of nature and Person. 

A second general feature of the Lord’s glorification 1s 
that it was the mutual work of the Divine itself and of 
the Lord as He stood upon earth. We have emphasized 
the consciousness of the Christ in seeking glorification. 
For we need to keep the Lord life-like to our thought and 
the living Person He was and is. But the hidden Divine 
itself moved to the Lord’s glorification, too (John 
xii.28). ‘That great change was the effect of the inter- 
action of the Divine itself and the growing Divine Human 
consciousness of the Christ. ‘The Father drew Him as 
He draws any soul to Him; He in turn had to feel and 
answer the appeal. 


Consider the Scriptures in the Excerpts. 


Study Excerpts nn.241, 242. 


138 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Name two general features of the process of glorification. 

2. Why was the glorification gradual? 

3. What is meant by calling it “reciprocal”? 

4. Will it answer to the Gospel record to think of the Christ 
simply as a human nature assumed and actuated by God on high? 


127. The Outcome of the Glorification. Resurrec- 
tion. Ascension. As the Lord’s glorification went on, 
His mind came ever more fully into the light of truth; it 
became the structure and-organ of truth. His human 
consciousness functioned as an expression of the Divine 
mind. What He heard with the Father, He spoke; what 
He did, the Father did in Him. His whole being and 
life became the one perfect response in the world of 
human life to the Divine. Imagination, love, insight, 
ministry and influence, all was a body of perfect re-action 
to all that God is, that perfect response which God alone 
could effect, indeed which could be only God manifest. 

The process of the Lord’s glorification reached finally 
to the bodily life even (cf. § 121). The idea of the 
Lord’s glorification at this point is peculiarly difficult. 
But let us put it as well as we can. What was the sensi- 
tive life and the physical body of the historical Jesus be- 
came in the Risen Christ the perfect and health-giving 
presence of the Divine in the sensitive and corporeal life 
of humanity. The Lord rose with the whole body, the 
whole body of possible re-action to the Divine, down to 
that wholesome and orderly response which the senses 
and the physical life can have. The resurrection was only 
a last result in the process of glorification. It published 
the fact that a glorification had been going on, which 
gave the Lord a fuller presence with men in a Divine 
Humanity. 

Ascension was a portrayal to the sight of the spirit* 
of the Lord’s entrance from the finite realm of life into 





* One has to bear in mind that from the first resurrection appearance 
the Lord was seen in the world of the spirit, by those whose eyes were 
opened. What He transcended in Ascension was the finite world of the 
spirit. 


THE LORD 139 


the infinite presence which had become His with all men 
in His Divine Humanity. 

Consider John viii.38, xiv. 10, x.30, v.26, xiv.6, 10 with the 
first paragraph above; Luke xxiv.39 and any record of the resur- 
rection appearances, with the second paragraph; Acts i.9 and con- 
text with the third paragraph. 


Study Excerpts nn.243-246. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. Try to state more and more clearly to yourself the general 
result of the Lord’s Glorification. 

2. How does the resurrection follow from His glorification? 

3. How does the Ascension? 

4. What other results do the Excerpts ascribe to the Lord’s 
Glorification? 


128. Invisible God in Visible. We are ready to con- 
clude our outline of what the teaching of the New Church 
has to say about God Manifest, or ‘the Lord the Re- 
deemer.’ 

As we look back over the teaching about the Lord’s 
appearance in human life, about His incarnation of God, 
and about the glorification which made all His human 
being Divine, and the continued presentation of God to 
our thought here, we find an amazingly increased force 
in the characterization of the Lord as ‘God with us.’ 
God of Whom, as He is in Himself, we can hope to know 
so little, and with Whom communion would be so remote, 
has made Himself known and near in Christ. Nor has 
He done this for a brief space only. The Humanity in 
which He stood revealed He kept for His. That instru- 
ment of our redemption, and that manifestation of Him- 
self to men, He has made eternally His. God stands 
forth now in that Divine Humanity tangible to thought, 
the winning Object of our love, open to communion with 
Him, and in touch with our struggles and life here. It is 
the insight of the new Christian day which the teaching 
of the New Church expects that the human soul may now 
address itself to the Invisible God in the Risen Lord and 
Saviour, Jesus Christ. 


140 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Consider John xiv.6, 9; xvi.7, xx.17; Colossians ii.9. 
Study Excerpts nn.246-248, 38. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Is the teaching about God Manifest meant to put us at the 
day referred to in John xiv.20? 

2. Say as well as you can what it means to you that the Divine 
has taken and made eternally His a perfectly lived life upon earth. 


REVIEW 


129. Review again, and more rapidly this time, 
§§ 99-108, chiefly to bring before you the thought of 
God as He is more in Himself. ‘Then, ready to feel the 
force of His appearance in the Lord on earth, begin a 
careful review of §§ 110-128. Put the Questions before 
you, and work back from them into the text, the Scrip- 
tures cited, and the Excerpts assigned. ‘This procedure 
will encourage you to think for yourself on the questions, 
and to put in your own words your answers. Finally put 
in a few words what seems the force for your life of 
God’s having manifested Himself in a life upon this 
earth. 


Tue Hoty SPIRIT 


130. Introductory. If, as we review what has been 
said about God as He is more in Himself, we note that 
we can have an idea of Him in that aspect only from 
some reflection of Him in history, or in the world, or in 
a Word from Him, we shall have to tell ourselves that 
we have been thinking of the Divine life from the first as 
going out from itself. We cannot think of it as kept to 
itself. The Divine has always been abroad in nature, in 
events, and in some urging and word from Him. If we 
have questions about Him, who inspires them if He does 
not? So when we came to think of God Manifest in the 
Lord on earth, we found that the Spirit of God was shed 
on that life, and brought that life to be. We have not 
been able to think of the Divine except as a Trine—God 


THE LORD 141 


as He is more in the depths of His Being, God Manifest 
in the Risen Lord, and God active in the gift of life to 
His creatures, especially of the gift of the spiritual life 
to human beings, or the Divine in the act of ‘proceeding.’ 
We go now to think of the Divine Being in this third 
aspect of His nature and life, keeping till last some 
thought about the Trinity as a whole. 


131. The Divine in the Act of Proceeding. It is not 
possible to think of God as Life itself, or life at its 
source, and to think of this Life as pent up. It is sure to 
fare forth, to create, and to guide things. There will be, 
still within the Infinite Being, a “Divine proceeding” (as 
the phrase is in the teaching of the New Church. The 
first word in that phrase is the noun, the second a quali- 
fying adjective). God will be behind and in all that comes 
into existence, and all that takes place. His purposes will 
be at the heart of events. His energies will underlie the 
growth of the trees. His influence in things will have to 
be found back of any force in nature, and beyond even 
the finite manifestations of love in the world of the 
spirit; He is not to be identified with His creation, at all. 
But He 1s inseparably in and of it. A newly found saying 
of the Lord’s runs, ‘Raise the stone, and there thou 
shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there am I.’ On this 
life issuing from God the heavens form, and all the 
spiritual world. So does nature, and the trackless uni- 
verse. It is philosophical thought, more, however, which 
concerns itself with this great conception as a whole; 
the theological teaching of which we are attempting an 
outline deals specifically with the Divine in the act of 
proceeding in the region of our spiritual life. The Divine 
proceeding engaged not in the maintenance of things, as 
it is; not in the preservation of the life of the beasts, as it 
is; not in the secret guidance of history, as it is; but in the 
arousing and fashioning of the spiritual life of man, is 
what we shall think of more especially. Active in this 
region of the spiritual life the Divine in the act of pro- 
ceeding is called the Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit. 


142 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Consider Psalm civ.29, 30; Genesis 1.2; Zechariah xii.1; Joel 


11.29; Isaiah |xi.1; Psalm xxxiii.6. 
Study Excerpts nn.249, 250. 


QUESTIONS: 

1. Why naturally is there a Divine in the act of proceeding? 

2. With what has It to do? 

3. In what region of life are we thinking of the Divine pro- 
ceeding when we use the names Spirit of God of it, or Holy Spirit? 


132. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Risen Lord. 
There was always the Divine in the act of faring forth 
in His world, therefore. God’s Spirit and influence were 
always active towards human regeneration. But if we 
will take account of what we have learned from our study 
of the manifestation of God in the Lord, we shall feel 
that that nearer approach to us did something necessarily 
for His influence among us. It brought that influence 
down into our consciousness in this world as never before. 
It let that influence out on us from His Presence with 
men in the world. he Spirit of God reached finite life 
always, of course, but from above, to describe its action 
so, and by way of lives which it had already transformed, 
which received and transmitted it in limited measure, too. 
Now God in the Humanity of Christ brought all Divine 
working down into the region of this world’s life, and 
His redeeming energies went out to men from that 
Humanity, on a level, as it were, with our consciousness. 
They came not from over us and mediated by others, 
but from on a line with our aspirations and needs, and 
directly offered. The Spirit issued from the Risen or 
Glorified Christ fuller, more powerful and more inti- 
mately present in human life than ever. With that scope 
and force the Spirit was not before Christ was glorified 
(John vii.39). The Risen Lord sped it toward the human 
soul as the breath of His life (John xx.22). The teach- 
ing of the New Church is unique in its appreciation of 
this power and scope which came to the Divine in the - 
act of proceeding by way of the Risen Christ’s near con- 


THE LORD 143 


tact with and intimate presence in our life. It has pre- 
ferred to keep for this fuller activity of the Spirit the 
name Holy Spirit, calling the Divine in the act of pro- 
ceeding previously the Spirit of God. 


In addition to the important Scriptures cited in the paragraph, 
consider John xv.26, xiv.26, xvi.7, 14; xx.17. 


Study Excerpts nn.251, 252, 250. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. How did the Lord’s life and work in the world affect the 
working of God’s Spirit in the world? 

2. What Scriptures seem to you to make this clear? 

3. How does the teaching of the New Church indicate its 
appreciation of the difference the Lord’s incarnation and glorifica- 
tion made to the working of the Divine Spirit in the world? 


133. The Work of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit 
is the Divine in the act of proceeding in the region of the 
moral and spiritual life of mankind. To the Divine in 
the act of proceeding are ascribable generally the activi- 
ties of creation, and of the maintenance of all things in 
life. It underlies the inanimate creation, and the non- 
iGgamanimate-sa ine sphere: ols ther bioly-opirit: is-the 
human life, where it seeks to arouse the spiritual life 
and to bring it about. Its work is in general the regenera- 
tion of the human being. One could turn back to the dis- 
cussion of the attainment of the spiritual life (§ 25), 
and read in it all the activity of the Spirit. We empha- 
sized then what the human being has for his part in order 
to attain the spiritual life. Yet that life is in the last 
analysis a gift, as indeed all life is. If a man decides for 
the spiritual life and a principled character and conduct, 
it is the Spirit’s influence which he has decided to follow 
and be hospitable to. If aman repents, it is of something 
which the Spirit has led him to regret, and resolve to 
avoid. If a man attains a measure of actual love to 
God, and charity to the neighbor, it is the Spirit which 
has urged these disinterested motives and which keeps 
supplying them. ‘The human soul has its free and hearty 


144 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


part toward having the spiritual life, but it is not a part 
discharged or even seen independently of the influence 
of the Holy Spirit. The right fashioning of the human 
soul, and the regeneration of human nature, is its work. 

How naturally it follows, then, that those who seek 
to speak of the spiritual life to men, must depend espe- 
cially on the Holy Spirit. It has a peculiar work to do 
with the minister to the spiritual life. It serves to give 
him light on his work, significance to his material, a really 
self-denying zeal, and vital knowledge of his opportuni- 
ties and task. 


Consider Psalm li as a whole; Ezekiel xviti.31, 32; the vision 
of the possible regeneration of Israel, Ezekiel xxxvil.1-14; the 
spirit as the one thing lacking in the Young Ruler, Luke xviii.22; 
cf. Luke x.38-42. See also John iii.7, 8. With the second para- 
graph above, Ezekiel xxxiv.1-10; John x.1-18; Matthew x.16 on. 


Study Excerpts nn.253, 254. 


QUESTIONS: 


1. Where has the Holy Spirit its sphere of activity? 

2. In what experiences do you find It active? Why? 

3. In what peculiar ways is its work especially needed by the 
minister? 

4. Relate the activity of the Holy Spirit and ‘remains’ (§ 32). 


THE TRINITY 


134. In General. We have let the existence of a Trine 
in the Divine Being appear as we went along. We have 
thought of God as He is more in the depths of His own 
Being, an effort the mind will make; and of His activity 
as the Infinite Life in creation, and in the preservation of 
all things. But He comes before human thought again, 
not only as He may be witnessed to in history and in 
nature and in a Word, but still more manifest, in Jesus 
Christ. To Him as God Manifest the world-wide work 
of the redemption falls. Quite as inevitably the thought 
goes on to question about Him as He is active in the 
regeneration of the race, or as the Holy Spirit. No dis- 


THE LORD 145 


cussion of the Being of God could proceed far without the 
appearance of the thought of the Trinity in Him. But 
we want now to bring together our thought on this out- 
standing truth. 


135. The Fact of the Trinity. In His revelation of 
Himself within historical days God seems first to have 
moved among the Jews to make His sole existence and 
unity plain to human thought. ‘The vision of His sole 
existence and His unity came very slowly among them. 
But when that was plainly conveyed, God took a step in 
the Incarnation which exhibited as never before that His 
unity of person and essence did not mean singleness or 
meagreness of being. The trine always in Him was dis- 
played in a trine which can be spoken of as coming to be 
with His historical self-disclosure in Christ. In His own 
Being He had always been hidden from human sight in 
the depth of His Being; in some measure been within 
men’s grasp and response, and also actively at work in 
their spirits and lives. But now His life, so far as it was 
the Divine within the human, saw its full presentation in 
a human life of His own in the Christ. His activity in 
human hearts by way of the Risen Christ’s intimate con- 
tact with life in this world saw a new scope and an access 
of power. The Trine always was, but, in human sight 
and life at least, and to our consciousness, it became with 
the appearance and work of Christ in the world, some- 
thing more than it ever had been. ‘This trine, let us bear 
in mind, is in the Being of God. It is three ways in which 
He exists. It is also but not only three ways in which 
He shows Himself. A Trinity of manifestation would 
mean a trinity of aspects in God to be manifested. 


Consider the Scriptures in Excerpt n.256; find others. 
Study Excerpts nn.255, 256; 249. 
QUESTIONS: 


1. In what order does revelation educate our thought about 
God as One, and as Trinal? 
2. What Trine was always in the Divine Being? 


146 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


3. (For Discussion): Did another Trine, really, come to be? 
4. Do you confine the Trine to ways in which God shows Him- 
self? 


136. Importance and Interpretation of the Idea of 
the Trinity. ‘The importance of the idea of God we con- 
sidered early (§ 95). But if there is a Trinity in God, 
that fact is one of the greatest of truths about Him, and 
has any importance which the idea of God in general has. 
Consider that the Unity of God was the climax of the 
Old Testament revelation of God, and the Trinity in the 
Lord the rich addition to our thought of God made by the 
New Testament. Ina different statement of the Trinity 
from any we have made yet, let us see how vital an idea, 
after all, it is to the religious experience. We so easily 
dismiss it as a theological speculation. The Divine Being 
exists in Himself in three ways, as He is in Himself, a 
well of Love; as He is Himself aware of His purposes, 
and fashions them in His Wisdom for realization in the 
creation and especially in human life; and as He actively 
gives Himself to men in the spiritual life. With due 
allowance for the limitations on our language and thought 
both, these distinguishable aspects in Him are like ranges 
of consciousness in Him. Existing in three ways, He 
comes to show Himself in three ways, not only as the 
Infinite Father and Creator, but in the Lord on earth and 
risen as the Truth and the Son, and in the rich activity 
which becomes His in the Holy Spirit. We cannot with 
truth reduce our thought to any one aspect of the Divine 
nature and activity, or blur these profound distinctions in 
His Being. Nor can we do so with benefit to our life. 
We need the awe of the Infinite, and the sense of the 
incomprehensible being of the Absolute; we need the 
human challenge, and the sympathy in our experiences, of 
the Risen Lord; we need the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit. Only an appreciation of the depth and richness 
and fulness of the Divine Being, can lead to a sensitive, 
rich and deep spiritual experience on our part. 


Consider Deuteronomy vi.4; Matthew iii. 13-17. 


THE LORD 147 


Study Excerpts nn.255, 257, 258. 
QUESTION: 


1. Put in words of your own the importance which you see the 
fact of the Trinity in God has for your life. 


137. The Trinity in the Lord Risen. The human 
mind has always had one difficulty, and probably always 
will have, with the thought of the Trinity and unity of the 
Divine Being. One idea tends to take away from the 
other in our limited thought because they both exist in 
their fulness in the Infinite. Still we have to avoid gain- 
ing unity for our thought of God by slighting the fact 
of trinity, and from letting the thought of the Trinity 
obscure the Oneness of God. The teaching of the New 
Church has brought with it an insight which would give 
both truths all weight. Just as the Lord Himself led men 
to look for the Father in Him, and for the Holy Spirit 
from Him, this teaching, with which He has come the 
second time, centers the Trinity in Him, and in Him, of 
course, Risen. ‘The only personal manifestation of the 
Supreme Being is in the Person, Risen and glorified, of 
the Christ. To return to our thought (in § 136) of the 
Trine as three ranges of consciousness in the Divine, we 
may help ourselves a little by saying that in the Divine 
Humanity is the center of the Divine Consciousness. 
There is He not aware (inward) of the Infinity of His 
Being as He is in Himself, and aware (outward) of His 
contact with the finite and with men? The fulness of 
the Divine being is in the Risen Christ. The teaching of 
the New Church seeks to have us see without confusion 
of thought among beings, that in the Lord Jesus Christ 
Risen one approaches the fulness of the Divine Being, 
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The Father is in Him, and 
one has the Spirit from Him. 


Find and consider the Scriptures alluded to in the final excerpt. 


Study Excerpts nn.259, 260. 


148 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


QUESTIONS: 


1. What does the teaching of the New Church seek to do with 
the thought of the unity and of the trinity in the Divine Being? 
2. What is the result for us in approaching the Divine? 


GENERAL REVIEWS 
138. Review. The Spiritual Life. §§ 1-59. Let the 


student assemble for himself what he considers the lead- 
ing ideas of §§ 1-59. What seem to him the outstanding 
topics and questions? What will he say on them for him- 
self? Let him help himself with the Review at §60. But 
finally let him attempt a résumé from a fresh point of 
view. Turn to Excerpt n.261, and consider its sweep- 
ing generalization, that there is everywhere in things the 
semblance of a marriage. Looking through 8§ 1-59, let 
him note how this image of a marriage is reflected in life 
itself, which is an interaction between all that can be 
classed as good and all that can be classed as truth. Note 
how the same dualism is reflected in the constitution of 
the human being, from the two capacities underlying all 
his life (§ 5), on to the whole development of heart and 
mind. ‘The spiritual life consists in a “‘heavenly mar- 
riage,’ of charity and faith (n.57). In fact heaven is 
the union of good and truth in a character, as hell is the 
working together of evil and falsity. Let the student 
go slowly over §§ 1-59, seeing how a summary is possible 
in the terms of a universal dualism in life (in the terms of 
the concept of a marriage everywhere each and every 
teaching of the New Church can be summed up). 

We have kept for consideration in connection with this 
large thought for a marriage everywhere, the subject of 
the marriage of man and woman. No religious teaching 
ever conceived marriage so profoundly or beautifully as 
does the teaching of the New Church. To it sex is a 
fact of the spirit, the man responding to life more in 
mental grasp and intellectual activity, the woman more 
in the affectional life and by the intuitions. In a true 
marriage the two form one rounded and creative 


THE LORD 149 


human life. Indeed, a married pair will be the first 
‘“oroup”’ realization of the spiritual life (see § 44, where 
we might have considered marriage, and the home, in 
this way). rue marriage, with its Divinely intended 
outlook and service and motives, can come about, too, 
only with religion’s help. It comes about only in the 
regeneration of the two partners. At its intended best 
it is an immortal tie. Marriage is a feature of heavenly 
society. We note only these outstanding suggestions of 
what is as extensive a teaching on the subject as it is 
beautiful. Study on it Excerpts nn.262, 263. 


139. Review. The Word. §§ 61-92. Again, let the 
student say in his own way what are the chief ideas of the 
teaching of the New Church on the Word. Write out 
your chief conclusions. ‘Then proceed, as with the earlier 
sections, to summarize these in the terms of the concept 
of a marriage everywhere. We called attention (§ 64) 
to the union of influences in the Word, speaking to the 
heart and to the mind; and also mentioned (§ 80) the 
interesting outward evidence in Scripture of this deep 
marriage of influences inthe Word. Compare the service 
which the Word renders in uniting heaven and earth 
geo ieje: or the union of Lord and disciple by means of 
it—the ‘marriage’ to which the kingdom of heaven is 
likened in the Gospels. Go slowly over the sections in 
the Outline on the subject of the Word, and see how the 
thought allows itself to be summed up in the terms of a 
dualism which obtains in all things and in all life. Study 
Excerpt n.264, and recur especially to nn. 146, 176. 


140. Review. The Lord. §8§ 93-137. Let the 
student formulate his own review of these sections. What 
are the chief divisions in the thought? What are the 
leading ideas to fix in mind on any main heading? Let 
him review the Outline as it stands. ‘Then let him pro- 
ceed to summarize as he is able, in the terms of the 
concept of a marriage which obtains everywhere. Ob- 
viously, if there is a semblance of a marriage everywhere, 


150 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


it has the same origin as have all things. And there is in 
the Infinite Being a perfect union of wisdom and love, 
the origin of the dualism which can be traced everywhere 
in life. Creation has borne some reflection of that union 
out into all things; Providence has for its object the 
preservation of that union, or the restoration of it, where 
it has been lost or damaged. ‘To this same perfect inter- 
action of love and light, of good and truth in life, the 
Lord attained in His glorification; or one can think of His 
glorification as the uniting in Him of the Divine essence 
and the human essence (n.241). Again, in the work of 
redemption, the Lord made possible, and by regeneration 
He brings about, a humanity in this world and the other 
with which He can be wed; He is the Bridegroom and 
Husband of His Church. We only intimate how reveal- 
ing a review the student will make if he will re-consider 
his thought in the terms of this sweeping generalization 
of the Theological Works, that everywhere there is a 
semblance of a marriage in life. Study for this point of 
view on §§ 94-137 Excerpt n.265. 


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EMANUEL SWEDENBORG 


1. What took place at the end of the Jewish Church has taken 
place similarly now. For at the end of that Church,! which was 
when the Lord came into the world, the Word was interiorly 
opened. Interior Divine truths were revealed by the Lord,? which 
were to serve a new Church to. be established by Him, and which 
did so serve it. To-day again, and for like reasons,* the Word 
has been interiorly opened, and Divine truths still more interior 


have been revealed, which are to serve a new Church, which will 
be called the New Jerusalem. E. 948. 


‘The student needs to satisfy himself with what meanings Swedenborg 
uses the word ‘church’ here and elsewhere. See § 45; or use Potts’ “Con- 
cordance.” Here the term means any one development of the religious 
life, or a religious era—the Old Testament era, the Christian era, a 
second Christian era. 

“In His oral teaching, and later in the Gospels. 

ST.e., because the Christian era has run its course, as in the other case 
the Jewish had. 


2. ‘To-day is the Lord’s Second Coming, and a new Church is 
to be established. ‘T. 115. 


3. The Second Coming of the Lord is not a coming in person,? 
but in the Word, which is from Himself, and is He. We read in 
many places? that the Lord will come in the clouds of heaven. 
The ‘clouds of heaven’ mean the Word in its natural sense, and 
‘glory’ the Word in its spiritual sense, and ‘power’ the Lord’s 
power by means of the Word. So the Lord is now to appear in 
the Word. He is not to appear in person because since His ascen- 
sion into heaven He is in the glorified humanity, in which He 
cannot appear to any man unless He opens the eyes of his spirit 
first, and this cannot be done with any one who is in evils and 
thence in falsities, It is vain to believe therefore that the Lord 


1 


154 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


will appear in a cloud of heaven in person; but He will appear in 


the Word, which is from Him, and is He. T. 775, 776. 


*‘Tn person’ means in a physical presentation or appearance, as is plain 
from the course of reasoning, and from what is said of the Lord’s not 
re-appearing in a material scene. In the Word He Himself does come, 
however, personally, not by delegate, the second time. 

* As in Mark xiii.26. 


4. Since the Lord cannot manifest Himself in person, and 
nevertheless has foretold! that He will come and found a new 
Church which is the New Jerusalem, it follows that He will do 
this by means of a man who ¢an not only receive the doctrines of 
this Church with his understanding, but can also publish them by 
the press. That the Lord manifested Himself before me, His 
servant, and sent me to this office,? and that He afterwards opened 
the sight of my spirit, and so admitted me into the spiritual 
world,? and has granted me to see the heavens and the hells, 
also to converse with angels and spirits, and this now continu- 
ously for many years,‘ I testify in truth; likewise that from the 
first day of that call I have received nothing which pertains to 
the doctrines of that Church from any angel,® but from the Lord 
alone while I read the Word. T.779. 


*His Return the Lord predicted in the discourse recorded in Mark xiii 
(and its parallels in the other synoptic Gospels). The purpose of the 
Return was to bring in again the kingdom of God, Swedenborg’s ‘church’ 
(See A.2928(3), 29(2), 2405(8)). With the promises in the Gospels, 
Swedenborg groups the promise of the same new beginnings made in the 
deeper sense of Revelation. 

*For the history of Swedenborg’s call, consult Tafel’s “Documents,” 208. 

*For the history of Swedenborg’s intromission into the spiritual world 
see the same, Note 162; 168, and references. 

*27 years at the time of writing; 29 years up to the end of Sweden- 
borg’s life. Cf. M.1, 26. 

*Much of what is set down in the Theological Works Swedenborg 
heard at the mouth of angels (Cf. all Memorable Relations, M.69, T.186, 
78, S.102, H.433) ; but when he came to formulate his teaching, he did 
the formulation from the Word and under the guidance of the illumination 
which he enjoyed. There is also much in the Theological Works which 
is recitation of information of his own, or of general knowledge, like the 
recitation of the history of creeds, the citation of the popular notion that 
the Scriptures compare unfavorably with other books in point of literary 
workmanship, etc. The assertion in T’.779 is best read in the light of 
Swedenborg’s definition of doctrine as “that which is to be believed and 
done.” This content of the Theological Works he “received from the 
Lord alone while he read the Word.” 


5. The universe in general is divided into two worlds, the 
spiritual and the natural. In the spiritual world there are angels 


STANDARD PASSAGES 155 


and spirits,! in the natural world men. In external appearance ? 
these two worlds are quite alike, so alike that they cannot be dis- 
tinguished; but in internal appearance® they are entirely unlike. 
The men themselves in the spiritual world, who are called angels 
and spirits, are spiritual, and being spiritual, they think spiritually 
and speak spiritually. But the men of the natural world are 
natural, and therefore think naturally and speak naturally; and 
spiritual thought and speech have nothing in common with natural 
thought and speech. ‘These two worlds, the spiritual and the 
natural, are so entirely distinct * from each other that they can in 
no respect be called the same. W. 163. 


1T.e., one way of distinguishing the two worlds is by reference to the 
consciousness which knows the one and the other. The human being, as 
angel or spirit, comes to know the world of spirit; the natural world is 
what we are aware of at present, as men. 

* The realm of the spirit has all the reality for the spirit that the realm 
of nature has for us in our present consciousness. Newly arrived spirits 
can scarcely believe they have left the world: see H.582. 

*]T.e., in substance, or as actually constituted; or in the appearance to 
reflection. 

* The student should note that separateness is not predicated of the two; 
the spiritual world is inseparably present in this (cf. A.5084(3), 5945(2), 
H.567(3), J.9(3). But the realm of the spirit is a world in its own right 
and with a character of its own. 


6. The knowledges which have been wanting to enable the 
understanding to penetrate where it might see that God is one, and 
that only one Divine “being” is possible, and that from it are all 
things of nature, are as follows: 1. Hitherto no one has known 
anything concerning the spiritual world, where angels and spirits 
are, and into which every one comes on death. (There follow 
eight pieces of information, consequences or parts of this idea of 
the spiritual world.) Hitherto these knowledges have been lack- 
ing; and yet these are the means through which a man may rise 
to some knowledge of the Divine “being.” ‘T.24. 


Let the student note how Swedenborg is working with the idea here of 
the spiritual world, in this case to lift the mind up to contemplate Infinite 
Being. Infinite Being is to be placed not only beyond the realm of nature. 
It also transcends the realm of finite spirit, or the world of spirit. No 
total spirit any more than a total natural energy is God. His very Being 
must be sought more deeply in life still. . . . The excerpt is cited only to 
illustrate how Swedenborg thinks with the spiritual world when con- 
sidering a subject. 


7. There are three essentials of the Church,? an acknowledg- 
ment of the Divine 2 of the Lord, an acknowledgment of the holi- 
ness of the Word, and the life which is called charity.2 According 


156 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


to the life which is charity is every one’s faith; from the Word 
comes the knowledge of what life should be; and from the Lord 
are reformation and salvation. P.259. 


* Which of the meanings which Swedenborg gives the word, will the 
student decide it has here? 

“These terms need looking up. What is the “Divine of the Lord”? Is 
it to be distinguished from “the divinity of the Lord”? Is the latter a 
concept about His nature? Is the former the life to be had from Him? 


8. It is commonly believed that life is a man’s own in him, so 
that one is not merely a receptacle of life, but is also life. This 
is a common belief, due to the appearance; for man lives, i.e., feels, 
speaks, thinks and acts, altogether as of himself. “Therefore the 
idea that man is a receptacle of life, and not life, cannot but seem 
like something unheard of, or a paradox, being opposed to sensuous 
thought, as it is to the appearance. “The cause of the fallacious 
belief that man is life, and consequently that life was created in 
him, and afterwards generated in him by an off-shoot, I have de- 
duced from the appearance; but the cause of the fallacy from 
appearance is, that most men at the present day are natural, and 
but few spiritual, and the natural man judges by appearances, and 
the fallacies thence, which are diametrically opposed to the truth 
that man is merely a receptacle of life, not life. “That he is not 
life, but a receptacle of life from the Lord, is evident from these 
obvious proofs, that all created things are in themselves finite, and 
that because man is finite he could have been created only from 


finite things. T’.470. 


Into this characterization of the human being as a “receptacle of life” 
the teaching packs two ideas, really. One is this thought that the human 
being is an organism every moment deriving its life (in the sense of 
inner animation) from the one Infinite Being. The other idea is that man 
lives in ‘receiving,’ which he does by exertion of his powers of feeling, 
thought and action. The term should not be allowed to mean passiveness. 


9. In every angel and in every human being there is an inmost 
or highest degree, or an inmost or highest something, into which 
the Lord’s Divine first or proximately flows, and from which it 
disposes the other interiors + which follow in him according to the 
degrees of order. This inmost or highest degree may be called 
the Lord’s entrance to the angel and to the human being, and His 
veriest dwelling-place with them. By means of this highest or 
inmost degree the human being is a human being, and is distin- 
cuished from brute animals, which do not have it. Hence it is 
that man, differently from animals, can be elevated as to all his 
interiors, which are of his mind and disposition, by the Lord to 


STANDARD PASSAGES 157 


Himself, can believe in Him, and be affected with love to Him, and 
thus behold Him, and can receive intelligence and wisdom, and 
speak from reason. “Thence, too, he lives to eternity.2, But what 
is disposed and provided in this inmost degree by the Lord does 
not come manifestly into the perception of any angel, since it is 
above his thought and transcends his wisdom. H.39. 

*On “interiors” cf. J.25(5), a very similar passage. See also A.10199 


(2) (where the ‘inmost’ is called ‘internal’), 1029, 2476e. 
SO PASM CDE 


10. There are in the human being from the Lord two powers 
by which he is distinguished from beasts. One is that he is able 
to understand what is true and what is good; this faculty is called 
‘rationality’. . . . The other is that he is able to do what is good 
and true; this faculty is called ‘freedom’. . . . In these two 
capacities the Lord is with every man. . . . They are the Lord’s 
abode in the human race; and from this every one lives for ever. 


W.240. 


11. Man is so created that he is at the same time in the spiritual 
world and in the natural world. ‘The spiritual world is where 
angels are, and the natural where men are; and since the human 
being is so made, there has been given him an external and an 
internal, an internal by which he may be in the spiritual world, 
and an external by which he may be in the natural world. His 
internal is what is called the internal man, and his external the 
external man. N.36. 


12. Internal and external are internal and external of a man’s 
spirit. His body is only a super-added external,* within which 
these exist; for the body does nothing from itself, but from its 
spirit which is in it. It is to be known that after release from the 
body, a man’s spirit thinks and wills, and speaks and acts, as much 


as before. N.46. 


13. There are two minds in man, a natural mind, and a 
rational! mind. ‘The natural mind is the mind of the external 
man, and the rational mind the mind of the internal man. The 
things belonging to the natural mind are called knowledge, while 
those belonging to the rational mind are called intellectual pro- 


* The body is so regarded in A.978, W.388. Swedenborg uses no 
term rigidly, or with the same sense uniformly. While in the extracts 
quoted he makes internal and external both to be of the spirit, he will also 
mean the body by the external in other connections: A.4659, N.224. “In- 
ternal and external of thought” in P.102 are to be found in the “external” 
man of N.46. Everywhere context must be watched. 


158 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


cesses. They are also distinguished in this, that what pertains to 
the natural mind is for the most part in the light of the world, 
which is called the light of nature; but what pertains to the 
rational mind is in the light of heaven, which is spiritual light. 


A.7130. 


1 “Rational” mind here is the same as “spiritual” mind in Swedenborg 
generally. So he calls the “internal man” “rational” (5150), when that 
is usually his term for the ‘middle’ man (1702). More strictly and 
usually the term means the mind relating spiritual values and our 
existence in this world, or what he calls also the ‘intermediate” mind. 


14. Every man has an internal and an external; but differently 
with good and evil. With the good the internal is in heaven and 
its light, and the external in the world and its light; and with 
them the light of the world is illumined with the light of heaven, 
and thus internal and external with them act as one, as efhicent 
cause and effect, or as what is prior and what is subsequent. But 
with the evil the internal is in the world and its light, and the 
external also; as a result they see nothing from the light of heaven, 
but only from the light of the world, which they call the light of 
nature. It is owing to this that the things of heaven are in thick 
darkness to them, and those of the world in light. From this it is 
plain that the good have an internal man and an external man; 
while the evil have not? an internal man, but an external man 
only. N.37. The internal man is called the spiritual man, be- 
cause it is in the light of heaven, which is spiritual; and the 
external man is called the natural man, because it is in the light of 
the world, which light is natural. The man whose internal is in 
the light of heaven, and external in the light of the world, is a 
spiritual man as to both; but the man whose internal is not in 
the light of heaven, but only in the light of the world, in which 
also is his external, is a natural man as to both. It is the spiritual 
man who in the Word is called living,” but the natural man who 


is called dead. N.38. 


*J.e., none that functions as such. It is still spoken of as existing, in 
this same excerpt. 
SOs Lukes 24, 32. 


15. All freedom is a matter of love, so much so that love and 
freedom are one. And as love is man’s life, freedom also belongs 
to his life. For every enjoyment that man has is from his love; 
no enjoyment is possible from any other source; and acting from 
one’s love’s enjoyment is acting from freedom; for enjoyment leads 
a man as a river does what is borne along in its current. Since 


STANDARD PASSAGES 159 


there are numerous loves, . . . it follows that there are likewise 
many kinds of freedom; but in general three, natural, rational and 
spiritual. 

Natural freedom every one has by inheritance. From it man 
loves only self and the world; one’s first life is nothing else. And 
as all evils spring from these two loves, and so it comes that evils 
belong to love, it follows that man’s natural freedom is in thinking 
and willing evils. When he has confirmed evils in himself by 
reasonings he does them from freedom in accordance with his 
reason. “To do them is from his faculty? called “liberty”; his 
confirming them, from his faculty! called “rationality.” . . . 

Rational freedom is from the love of reputation with a view to 
honor or gain. “The enjoyment of this love is to appear out- 
wardly as a moral man; and because he loves this reputation, he 
does not defraud, commit adultery, take revenge, or blaspheme; 
making this a matter of reason, he does from freedom in accordance 
with his reason what is sincere, just, chaste and friendly ; moreover, 
from such reasoning he can advocate such conduct. But if his 
rational is merely natural, and not also spiritual, this freedom is 
outward only, not internal. He does not love these goods in the 
least inwardly, but only outwardly for the sake of his reputation, 
as was said, and for the same reason the good deeds done by him 
are not in themselves good. He may even assert that they ought 
to be done for the public welfare, but he says this not from any 
love for the public welfare, but out of love for his own honor and 
gain. His freedom, therefore, derives nothing from a love for 
the public welfare, neither does his reasoning, since this falls in 
with his love. Consequently, this rational freedom is a more in- 
ward natural freedom. . . 

Spiritual freedom is from a love tor eternal life. Into that love 
and its enjoyment no one comes except one who thinks that evils 
are sins and so does not will them, and at the same time looks to 
the Lord. As soon as one does this he is in that freedom. For 
one’s ability not to will evils for the reason that they are sins, and 
not to do them, comes from the more inward or higher freedom 
which is from his more internal or higher love. At first such free- 
dom does not seem to be freedom, and yet it is; afterwards it so 
appears, and then man acts from freedom itself, in accordance 
with reason itself, in thinking, willing, speaking and doing what 
is good and true. “This freedom increases as natural freedom de- 
creases and becomes subservient; and it unites itself with rational 
freedom and purifies it. Any one may come into this freedom if he 
is but willing to think that life is eternal, and that the temporary 


160 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


enjoyment and bliss of life in time are but a fleeting shadow, com- 
pared with the never-ending enjoyment and bliss of a life in 
eternity; and this a man can think if he wishes, because he has 
rationality and liberty, and because the Lord, from whom he has 
these powers, continually gives the ability. P.73. 


*In either case the capacity named is misused, of course. 


16. What is freedom of choice but the power to will and do, 
and to think and speak to all appearance as if of oneself? TI’.489. 


17. Without free will in spiritual things the human being can 
in no wise advance into light, i.e., into truths and goods of the 
church, or procure himself life. . . . Without that free will 
he would not be a human being, but only a figure and a phantom. 
For his thought would be without reflection, consequently with- 
out judgment, and thus in Divine things which are of the Church 
he would have no more ability to turn than a door without a hinge, 
or with one, fastened with a bolt of steel. His will, too, would 
be devoid of decision, hence no more active towards justice or 
injustice than the stone on the mound under which lies a dead 
body. . . . Free will in spiritual things is from this, that man 
walks and lives his life in the midst between heaven and hell. 
Heaven acts on him from above, but hell from beneath. Man is 
given the option of turning himself to higher things or to lower, 
thus either to the Lord or to the devil. Coronis, 27, 28. 


*Swedenborg has no thought of a supreme evil being, but means all 
evil here. 


18. There are many who enjoy natural good from inheritance, 
by virtue of which they enjoy doing good to others, but who have 
not been imbued with principles of well-doing derived from the 
Word or the doctrine of the Church or from religion. Hence 
they have not been endowed with conscience. For conscience does 
not come from natural or hereditary good, but from the doctrine 
of truth and good and a life in accord therewith. When these 
come into the other life, they wonder that they are not received 
into heaven,! saying that they have led a good life. “They are told, 
however, that a good life from what is hereditary or natural is 
not a good life, but from what is of the doctrine of good and truth 
and a life according thereto. By means of these they have prin- 
ciples impressed on them concerning good and truth, and they 
receive conscience, which is the plane into which heaven flows. 
A.6208. 

*Cf. note to n.25. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 161 


19. A more perfect conscience can be given those who are en- 
lightened in truths of faith? above others and who are in clear 
perception above others, than can be given the less enlightened and 
those in obscure perception. A.9114. 

*A ‘truth of faith’ is any truth about our life (as that we live from 
God) not simply known about, but apprehended in the attitude of faith 
In it. 

20. Conscience in general is true, spurious and false. A true 
conscience is formed by the Lord from truths of faith; and when 
a man is gifted with it, he becomes fearful of acting contrary 
to the truth of faith, since he would be acting against his conscience. 
‘This conscience no one can receive who is not in truths of faith. 
For that reason many in the Christian world are incapable of 
receiving it, because every one takes his own tenets to be truths of 
faith. Nevertheless all who are regenerated receive conscience 
when they receive charity, inasmuch as charity is fundamental in 
conscience. Spurious conscience is formed with gentiles from the 
religious worship in which they wexe born and educated, to act 
contrary to which is to them to act against conscience. When their 
conscience is founded in charity, mercy and obedience, then they 
are in a state to receive true conscience in the other world, which 
they receive, indeed, because they love nothing better than truth 
of faith. False conscience is one formed not from internal con- 
siderations but extrinsic, that is, not from charity, but out of love 
of self and the world. Some persons feel that they are acting 
against conscience when they act against another, and at such 
moments seem to themselves to be inwardly tormented. “The 
reason for this, however, is that they perceive their own life, honor, 
reputation, wealth or gain to be endangered, and thus they them- 
selves are injured. Some receive hereditarily a tender-heartedness 
of the kind; others acquire it by habit; but it is false conscience. 


ie Uo3: 


21. There are those who believe that it is difficult to lead the 
life which leads to heaven, which is called the spiritual life, be- 
cause they have been told that a man must renounce the world, 
must divest himself of the lusts called the lusts of the body and 
the flesh,t and must live spiritually; and they understand this to 
mean that they must discard worldly things, which consist chiefly 
in riches and honors; that they must walk continually in pious 
meditation on God, salvation and eternal life; and must spend 
their time in prayers and in reading the Word and other pious 
books. Such is their idea of renouncing the world, and living in 


162 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


the spirit, and not in the flesh. But .. . in fact, those who 
renounce the world and live in the spirit in this fashion acquire a 
sorrowful life which is unreceptive of heavenly joy, for every man’s 
life continues the same after death. On the contrary, if a man is 
to receive the life of heaven, he must needs live in the world and 
engage in its business and employments, and by means of a moral 
and civil life in the world receive the spiritual life. The spiritual 
life can be formed in man, and his spirit prepared for heaven, in 
no other way. H.528. 


hone truth in this is allowed for in what follows quite immediately. 
Cye 359; : 


22. All who are in! knowledges of truth and good, but not, 
conformably to these, in good of life, may live a moral life as do 
those who are in knowledges and through these in good of life. Yet 
their moral life is natural, and not spiritual, because in their life 
they do not live sincerely, justly and well from religion; and 
those who do not live well from religion cannot be conjoined with 
heaven; for religion is what makes a man spiritual, and unites him 
with angels, who are altogether spiritual. To live well from 
religion is to think, will and do because it has been so enjoined in 
the Word, and because the Lord has commanded it. ‘To live not 
from religion is to think, will and act solely from regard to civil 
and moral laws. Such people, having regard only to these laws, 
unite themselves to this world alone, with which these laws have 
to do. The former have regard to the Lord, and so are united 


to Him, E.107(3). 


* The teaching of the New Church thinks of what is good, and of truth, 
and in fact of all life, as existing for and by themselves. We do not 
fashion, or even possess, but enter on these things; hence the phrasing, 
“in knowledges of good and truth,” “in good of life,” etc. 


23. A man lives a moral life from a spiritual origin when he 
lives it from religion; that is, if he thinks, when anything evil, 
insincere, or wrong presents itself, that it must not be done because 
it is contrary to Divine laws. When one refrains from doing 
such things out of deference to Divine laws, he acquires for him- 
self spiritual life, and his moral life is from his spiritual life. For 
by this manner of thought and faith a man communicates with 
angels of heaven, and by communication with heaven his inward 
spiritual 1 man is opened,” the mind of which is the higher mind, 
such as the angels of heaven have, and he is thereby imbued with 
heavenly intelligence and wisdom. From this it may be seen that 
to live a moral life from a spiritual origin is to live from religion, 


STANDARD PASSAGES 163 


and, within the Church,® to live from the Word. ‘Those who live 
a moral life from religion and the Word are raised above the 
natural man, thus above what is their own, and are led by the 
Lord through heaven. Consequently they have faith, fear of God, 
conscience, a spiritual affection, also, for truth, which is an affection 
for knowledges of good and truth from the Word, for to them 
these are Divine laws, in accord with which they live. Many 
gentiles live such a moral life, for they think that evil is not to be 
done because it is contrary to their religion. 

On the other hand to live a moral life not from religion, but 
only from fear of the law in the world, and of loss of fame, honor 
and gain, is to live a moral life not from a spiritual but a natural 
origin. Such, accordingly, have no communication with heaven. 
As they think insincerely and wrongly about the neighbor, although 
they speak and act otherwise, their internal spiritual man is closed,? 
and only the inward natural man is open; and when this is open, 
they are in the light of the world, but not in the light of heaven. 
Such people have little regard, therefore, for Divine and heavenly 
things, and some deny them, and believe nature and the world to be 


Aliome tt 195 (2503) 


* Notice how what we learned of man’s constitution is worked with in 
this excerpt. Recur to Excerpt n.14, but also nn.11, 12 and 13. 

“Opened” means “developed,” or “rendered active,’ as ‘‘closed” 
throughout this excerpt, means “inactive,” and “unawakened.” Cf. n.86. 

“Here “Church” means a certain area, where the Word is possessed, 
and the Lord known. There a higher standard is asked for; religion 
spiritualizes the moral life for the non-Christian; the Christian has to seek 
specifically Christian sanctions and standards, those of the Gospels. 


24. Distinction ought to be made carefully between spiritual 
good and natural good. Spiritual good has its quality from truths 
of faith, their abundance and connection, but natural good is born 
with one, and also comes about incidentally, as a result of mis- 
fortunes, diseases and the like. Natural good saves no one, but 
spiritual good saves all. For the good which is formed from 
truths of faith is the plane into which heaven can flow, or the Lord 
through heaven, and lead a man, and withhold him from evil, and 
afterwards raise him to heaven, but not so natural good. ‘Those in 
natural good can be carried away as readily by what is false as 
by truth, if only the false appears in the shape of truth, and they 
can be as readily led by the evil as by the good, if evil be only 
presented as good, for they are like feathers in a wind. A.7761. 


The Theological Works also use the phrase “natural good” to mean a 
spiritual man’s life in the realm of our natural existence. It is so used 


164 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


in A.4231. “Natural good,” so meant, consisting in deeds from a true 
spirit, is to be distinguished from this “natural good,” which is an heredi- 
tary good-heartedness. 


25. It is to be understood that those who do good from natural 
goodness only, and not also from religion, are not accepted after 
death,! because there is only natural good in their charity, and not 
spiritual good also; and it is the spiritual which conjoins the Lord 
to man, and not the natural without it. Natural goodness is of 
the flesh merely, being acquired by birth from parents; but spiritual 
goodness is of the spirit born anew from the Lord. ‘T.537. 


1A statement like this is madé not only in view of the reasoning which 
follows, but on the strength of observation in the world of the spirit, 
where the Seer saw so many come who had not attained “the spiritual 
life.” Recur to Excerpt n.4; also to Outline, § 2. 


26. Many believe that a spiritual life, or the life which leads to 
heaven, consists in piety, in a holy external, and in renunciation 
of the world. But piety without charity, and a holy external 
without a holy internal, and the renunciation ef the world without 
life in the world, do not make the spiritual life. Piety from 
charity, however, and a holy external from a holy internal, and the 
renunciation of the world with life in the world, do make it. 

Piety is to think and speak piously, to spend much time in prayer, 
bear oneself humbly at the time, to attend church and listen de- 
voutly to the preaching there, to go often in the year to the 
sacrament of the Supper, and to observe similarly the other duties 
of worship according to the church’s regulations. But the life of 
charity is to will well and do well by the neighbor, to act from 
justice and equity in every work, and also from good and truth in 
every function. In a word, the life of charity consists in doing 
uses. Divine worship consists primarily in this life of charity, but 
secondarily in the life of piety. One who separates the one from 
the other, therefore, i.e., who leads a life of piety, and not of 
charity at the same time, does not worship God. He thinks indeed 
about God, but not from God, but from himself; for he thinks 
of himself continually, and not at all of his neighbor; or if he 
thinks of his neighbor, he holds him as worthless if not of his sort. 
And he thinks similarly of heaven as a reward; and hence there is 
thought for merit in his mind, and also love of self, as well as 
contempt for and neglect of uses, and so of the neighbor, with a 
belief at the same time in his own blamelessness. N.123, 124. 


27. When a man is in love and charity he is continually in 
worship, outward worship being only an effect. In such worship 


STANDARD PASSAGES 165 


are the angels; with them, therefore, there is a perpetual Sabbath ;1 
and for that reason the Sabbath, in the Word’s internal sense, 
means the Lord’s kingdom. While in the world? a man ought, 
however, to engage in external worship also. By external worship 
internal things are aroused, and by means of external worship 
external things are also kept in holiness, so that internal things can 
flow in. Man is thus also imbued with knowledges, and is prepared 
to receive heavenly things, and is gifted with states of holiness, 
although of this he is unaware; these states of holiness are pre- 
served in him by the Lord for the use of the eternal life, for all 
states of one’s life recur in the other life. A.1618. 

1Note the new meaning given this time-honored phrase. 

* The interjection of this clause does not mean that “external worship” 


is to be found only in this life; the heavens also see such worship. Cf. 
H.chap. xxv. 


28. There are two faculties in man which constitute his life, 
will and understanding,' to which each and all things in him have 
relation. ‘There are two faculties, because there are two things 
which make the heavenly life—good and truth; good having 
relation to the will, and truth to the understanding. It is plain 
from this that there are two things which make a man spiritual, 
and therefore make him blessed in the other life, namely, charity 
and faith; for charity is good, and faith is truth, and charity has 
relation to the will,? and faith to the understanding. A.5232. 


* At bottom this way of reciting how the human being is constituted, 
does not depart wholly from the other view (nn.11, 12, 13); “will” is 
inward, and understanding “outward.” At § 5 we also gave a thought 
to the two-fold response to life of which the human being is capable. 
Will and understanding are that response being worked out. We have 
life to apprehend, and to re-embody in personality. The one re-action is 
“will” and the other “understanding,” in the terminology of the Theologi- 
cal Works. So the fuil activity of the will in the realization of the 
spiritual life is “charity,” of the understanding is “faith.” 

* This is a generalization, of course; as the excerpts on faith disclose, 
the will is involved in the attitude of faith; but volition is more con- 
spicuous in charity, and mental activity in faith. 


29. Faith is internal + acknowledgment of truth. F.1. 


In the psychology of the Theological Works the “will” is what is 
internal in the human being. Each term in this statement bears analysis. 
What would you distinguish from “acknowledgment”? Can you substitute 
“a proposition” or “a doctrine” for “truth’? On this question get help 
in A.4642(1). 


30. Faith is an affection for truth from willing truth because 
ThisstTtitli NGL 2: 


166 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


31. Faith is not only a knowledge and acknowledgment of all 
things that the doctrine of faith comprises, but especially is it 
obedience to all things which the doctrine of faith teaches. A.36 


32. It is one thing to know truths, and quite another to 
acknowledge them, and still another to have faith in them. Merely 
to know what is of faith is of man’s memory, without the concur- 
rence of his reason. “Io acknowledge what is of faith is a rational 
consent induced by certain causes and for the sake of certain ends. 
But to have faith is of conscience, or of the Lord working through 


conscience. A.896(1, 2). 


33. Merely believing what is true and believing the Word is 
not faith, but faith is loving truth from heavenly love, and willing 
and doing it from interior affection. H.482. 


34. The progress of faith with those who are being created 
anew is as follows. At first they have no life, for it is only in the 
good and the true that there is life, and none in the evil and false. 
Afterwards they receive life from the Lord by faith, first by faith 
of the memory, which is a faith of mere knowledge; next by faith 
in the understanding, which is an intellectual faith; lastly, by faith 
in the heart, which is the faith of love, and saving faith. A.30(2). 


35. Faith is formed by a man’s going to the Lord, learning 
truths from the Word, and living according to them. ‘T. 347, 


36. From childhood on, every one procures for himself from the 
Word, or from the teaching of the Church, or from preaching, 
knowledges of what is good and true, which are for the purposes 
of eternal life. He deposits them in his natural memory, in greater 
or less abundance, according to the affection for knowing born 
with him, and increased by various excitements. But all these 
knowledges, whatever their number or quality, are only a store- 
house, from which the faith of charity may be formed; and this 
faith is not formed, except as a man shuns evils as sins. As he does 
this, these knowledges become those of a faith in which is spiritual 
life. If he does not shun evils as sins, these knowledges are items 
of information only, and do not become knowledge which is part 
of the faith that has spiritual life in it. “This storehouse is especially 
necessary, because without it faith cannot be formed; knowledges 
of good and truth enter into faith and compose it. If there are 
none, faith does not exist; a faith quite void and empty is im- 
possible. If they are few, a scanty and meagre faith is formed; 


STANDARD PASSAGES 167 


if there are many, a faith rich and full, according to the abundance 


of them, is formed. F.26-28. 


ee Saving faith is in the Lord God the Saviour Jesus Christ. 
337. 


38. Men should believe, that is, have faith in God the Saviour 
Jesus Christ, because this is faith in the visible God, in Whom is 
the Invisible. Faith in God Visible, Who is Man and at the same 
time God, enters into man. For in its essense faith is spiritual, 
but natural in its form. For every thing spiritual is received in 
what is natural in order to be anything with the human being. 


f1pn339: 


39. Charity is an internal affection from which one wills to do 
good, and this without recompense.t N.104. 


* Without attaching merit to the action; also, not acting in view only 
of some return. 


40. ‘What is faith?” “To believe what the Word teaches.” 
“What is charity?” “To do what the Word teaches.” F.43. 
What is charity but the good which a man does from the Lord? 4 
And what is faith but the truth which a man believes from the Lord ? 
T.712. Charity is to act well with the neighbor, and faith is to 
think well concerning God and the essentials of the church.? 
R.224. Charity towards the neighbor is the performance of 
uses. E.324(7). Charity, or love towards the neighbor, is to love 
truth, sincerity, and right, and to do them from the will. 


E.204(2). 


1Deed and thought are “from the Lord” when they flow from motives 
which we can believe He inspires. 
See Excerpt n.7. 


41. Charity itself is to act faithfully and justly in the office, 
business and work in which one is. For all things which a man 
does in that connection are of service to society; and service is a 
good; and good, in a sense apart from persons, is the neighbor. 


ae. 


42. The life of charity is to will well and to do well by the 
neighbor, in all work and in every employment acting out of regard 
to what is just! and equitable,! good and true. In a word, the 
life of charity consists in the performance of uses. N.124. 


1Even terms like these are with Swedenborg technical, “just” and 
equitable” referring with much the same distinction to the civil life (see 


168 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


H.484) as “good” and “truth” do to the spirtual life. The equivalent 
expressions of the moral life are “honest” and ‘“decorous” (A.2915). On 
the inclusion of all our life in the spiritual, see § 10. 


43. Every man who looks to the Lord and shuns evils as sins, 
if he sincerely,! justly, and faithfully performs the work that 
belongs to his office and employment, becomes a form of charity. 
Charity in the Business Man. If he looks to the Lord and shuns 
evils as sins, and transacts his business sincerely, justly and faith- 
fully, he becomes charity.” He acts as if from his own prudence, 
and yet trusts in the Divine Providence. He is therefore not 
despondent in misfortune, nor elated with success. He thinks 
of the morrow, and yet does not think of it. He thinks of what 
should be done cn the morrow, and how it should be done; and 
yet does not think of the morrow, because he ascribes the future to 
the Divine Providence and not to his own prudence. Even his 
prudence he ascribes to the Divine Providence. He loves business 
as the principal of his vocation, and money as its instrumental, and 
does not make this the principal, and that the instrumental. . . . 
Thus he loves his occupation, which in itself is a good of use; and 
not the means rather than the occupation. He indeed does not 
distinguish between them so, yet they are so distinguished when he 
looks to the Lord and shuns evils as sins. For he shuns avarice, 
which is evil, and the root of many evils. He loves the common 
good while loving his own; for that lies hidden in it, like the root 
of a tree, which conceals itself in the earth; from which, neverthe- 
less, it grows, and blossoms, and bears fruit. Not that he gives to 
it of his own beyond what is due; but the fact is that the public 
good is also the good of his fellow-citizens (whence indeed it 
arises), whom he loves from the charity of which he is an embodi- 
ment. No one can know the secrets of charity within himself,* 
for he cannot see them; but the Lord sees them. C.99, 108. 


*In these terms there is reference to the moral, the civil and the spiritual 
life respectively. N.106. 

*A man becomes what he cultivates. See n.113. 

° Cf. Matthew xxv.37-39. 


44, In common belief charity is nothing else than giving to the 
poor, succoring the needy, caring for widows and orphans, con- 
tributing to the building of hospitals, infirmaries, asylums, orphan- 
ages and especially churches, and to their decoration and income. 
But most of these things are not the proper activities of charity, 
but extraneous to it. A distinction is to be made between the 
duties of charity, and its benefactions, By the duties of charity 


STANDARD PASSAGES 169 


those exercises of it are meant, which proceed directly from charity 
itself. “These have to do primarily with one’s occupation. By 
the benefactions those aids are meant which are given outside of, 
and over and above the duties. T.425. 


45. The benefactions of charity are all the good deeds which a 
man who is charity does, freely, outside of his calling. C.122. 


46. The signs of charity are all things of worship. All things 
of worship are externals, of body, and of the mind. FExternals of 
the body which pertain to worship are going to church, listening 
to sermons, devoutly singing and praying on the knees, etc. Ex- 
ternals of the mind pertaining to worship are thought aad medita- 
tion about God, and about heaven, eternal life, and salvation; 
reflection on one’s thoughts and intentions, as to whether they are 
evil or good, and that the evil are from the devil, and the good 
from God, etc. Charity itself is in the inward man, and its sign 
in the outward. When charity is in the inward man, and consti- 
tutes him, then all acts of worship done in the external are signs 


or marks of it. C.114-117. 


47. Obligations of charity are taxes, imposed on subjects and 
citizens, for the various necessities and uses of the state; customs 
duties; the expenses and outlay for the various needs and uses of a 
household. . . . Then there are some which become obligations 
by solemn promise. “There are civil obligations besides, duties of 
subordination, obedience, honor and social intercourse—which must 
be called obligations because a man ought to do them. . . . The 
various duties which the laws of a kingdom impose are called 
obligations of charity, because charity does them from duty, and 
not of its good pleasure;! and as charity regards them as uses, 
it does them sincerely and willingly. With those in charity the 
sincerity and kindliness of charity are inwardly present in every 
duty. Both the sincerity and the kindliness are in the measure of 
the uses which they foresee in the duties. . . . C.124. 


* That is, not of its initiation. Charity undertakes these duties not 
grudgingly but willingly, as is said in a moment. In C.125 it is added 
that the man not in charity will observe the laws from duty, but the man 
who has charity will observe them out of love, and out of regard to his 
fellow human beings. 


48. There is an affection in every employment, which puts the 
mind upon the stretch, and keeps it intent upon its work or study. 
If it is not relaxed, it becomes heavy, and its desire meaningless ; 
as salt, when it loses its saltness, no longer stimulates, and as 


170 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


the bow on the stretch, unless it is unbent, loses the force it gets 
from its elasticity. Continuously intent upon its work, the mind 
wants rest; and dropping to the physical life, it seeks pleasures 
there that answer to its activities. As is the mind in them, such 
are the pleasures, pure or impure, spiritual or natural, heavenly or 
infernal. If it is the affection of charity which is in them, all 
diversidns will recreate it—shows, games, instrumental and vocal 
music, the beauties of field and garden, social intercourse. “Chere 
remains deep in them, being gradually renewed as it rests, the love 
of work and service. The longing to resume this work breaks in 
upon the diversions and puts‘an end to them. For the Lord flows 
from heaven into the diversions, and renews the man; and He gives 
the man an interior sense of pleasure in them, too, of which those 


know nothing who are not in the affection of charity. C.127, 
128, 130. 


49. In regard to mere person, one man is not more a neighbor 
than another, but only in regard to the good which gives him his 
peculiar nature; for there are as many differences of neighbor as 
there are differences of good, and they are infinite. It is believed 
ordinarily that a brother, kinsman or relation, is more a neighbor 
than a stranger, and that our fellow-countryman is more the 
neighbor than a foreigner ; and yet every one is the neighbor accord- 
ing to his good, be he Greek or Gentile; for every one is the 
neighbor according to spiritual affinity and relationship. “This may 
be seen from the fact that every man after death comes among his 
own, to whom he is similar in good, or, what is the same thing, in 
affection; and that natural affinities perish after death, and are 
succeeded by spiritual affinities,t because in the newly-entered 
heavenly society, one man knows another, and the two are con- 
sociated, by being in similar good. C.26. 


* Cf. Mark iii.31-35. 


50. To love the neighbor is not alone to wish well and do good 
to a relative, friend or good man, but to a stranger also, an enemy 
or bad man. But charity is exercised toward the latter in one 
way, toward the former in another; toward a relative or friend 
by direct benefits ; toward an enemy or bad man by indirect benefits, 
which are rendered by exhortation, discipline, punishment and con- 
sequent amendment. ‘This may be illustrated thus: A judge who 
punishes an evil-doer in accord with law and justice, loves his 
neighbor; for so he makes him better and consults the welfare of 
the citizens that he may not do them harm. Every one knows that 


STANDARD PASSAGES 171 


a father who chastises his children when they do wrong, loves them, 
and that on the other hand one who fails to chastise them, loves 
their evils, and this cannot be called charity. Again, if a man 
repels an insulting enemy, and in self-defence strikes him or 
delivers him to the judge in order to prevent injury to himself, 
and yet with a disposition to befriend the man, he acts from a 
charitable spirit. Wars that have as an end the defence of country 
and church, are not contrary to charity. ‘The end in view de- 
clares whether it is charity or not. T.407. 


51. A friendship of love, contracted with a person without re- 
gard to his spiritual quality, is detrimental after death.1 Friend- 
ship of love means interior friendship, such that not only the 
outward but the inward man is loved, and this without scrutiny 
into the quality of his inward nature or spirit, i.e., into his mind's 
affections, whether these spring from love to the neighbor and love 
to God, and so are adapted to association with angels of heaven, 
or from a love opposed to the neighbor and God, and thus adapted 
to association with devils. Friendship of this kind is often con- 
tracted, for various causes and for various purposes. It is distinct 
from external friendship, which relates only to the person, and 
exists for the sake of various bodily and sensuous delights, and 
for the sake of mutual intercourse in various ways. . . . This 
is called friendship simply; but the former is called the friendship 
of love, because friendship is natural conjunction, love, spiritual. 
Those who have contracted with one another in the world friend- 
ships of love cannot (after death) be separated like others in 
accord with order, and adjudged to societies correspondent to their 
lives. They are bound together inwardly—as to the spirit, nor 
can they be torn apart, because they are like scions ingrafted into 
branches. If, therefore, one is in heaven as to his interiors, and 
the other in hell as to his interiors, they stick together much as a 
sheep tied to a wolf . . . and he whose interiors are in hell 
breathes his infernalism into the other whose interiors are in heaven. 
. . . Both are thrust down to hell, where the good spirit suffers 
severely, but finally, after a lapse of time, is released, and then 
first begins his preparation for heaven. It is wholly different with 
those who love the good in another, i.e., who love justice, judg- 
ment, sincerity and benevolence arising from charity, and especially 
with those who love faith in the Lord and love to Him. Because 
these love the things within the man apart from the things without, 
when they do not discover the same things in the person after 
death, they withdraw from the friendship immediately, and are 


172 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


associated by the Lord with those in a like good. It should be 
said that no one is able to explore the interiors of the mind of 
those with whom he associates and deals; and this is not necessary; 
only let him guard against a friendship of love with any one.? 
External friendship for the sake of various uses does no harm. 


1.446, 448, 449. 


*Of course it is in this life, too; Swedenborg is bringing out the full 
disaster of a friendship formed for another without regard to that 
person’s moral quality. 

*I.e., with any and every one, or without thought for the friend’s moral 
quality. Are we not to seek friendships which are the most that a friend- 
ship can be? What is to be satd of friendships which are sacrificial in 
their loyalty, to the last trying to redeem a friend who is not his best self? 


52. Not only is the individual man the neighbor, but the col- 
lective man, too. A society, smaller or larger, is the neighbor; the 
Church is; the kingdom of the Lord is; and above all the Lord 
Himself. “These are the neighbor, to whom good is to be done 
from love. “These are also the ascending degrees of the neighbor; 
for a society consisting of many is the neighbor in a higher degree 
than is the individual; one’s country in a still higher degree; the 
Church in a still higher degree than one’s country; in a degree 
higher still the kingdom of the Lord; and in the highest degree the 
Lord Himself. These degrees of ascent are like steps in a ladder 
at the top of which is the Lord. N.91. 


53. That (another) man is the neighbor is known. A society 
is the neighbor because a society is a composite man. One’s own 
country is a neighbor because his country consists of many societies, 
and is therefore a still more composite man. ‘The human race is 
a neighbor because the human race is composed of great societies, 
each of which is a composite man; and hence it is a man in the 
widest sense. C.38. 


54. The Lord? is our neighbor in the highest sense, for He is 
to be loved above all things. ‘Therefore everything derived from 
Him; in which He is present, is our neighbor; consequently good 
and truth are our neighbor. ‘The distinctions of neighbor are 
according to the quality of good, and thus according to the presence 
of the Lord. Every man, every society, also our country, and the 
Church, and in the universal sense the kingdom of the Lord are our 
neighbor. ‘To do kind and serviceable offices to them, according 
to their several states, from a love of goodness, is to love our 
neighbor. J.39. 

* Cf. Matthew xxv.45. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 173 


55. All who love the Lord above all things, and the neighbor 
as themselves, do what is good and true for the sake of what is 
good and true. For good and truth are the Lord Himself, 
Wherefore, when they love good and truth,! i.e., when they will 
and do them from love, they love the Lord. ‘This is also the 
case with those who love the neighbor as themselves. For the 
neighbor in the universal sense is good and truth. For the neighbor 
is a fellow-citizen, a society, a man’s country, the Church and the 
Lord’s kingdom. ‘To love the neighbor is to will well to these 
and to will their good. Wherefore it is their good which is to 
be loved; and when this is loved, the Lord is loved, because this 
good is from Him. Hence it is evident that love to the neighbor, 
which is called charity, has in it love to the Lord.2, A.10336. 

1Contrasted with sentiment for the “person” of the Lord: see H.15 
and John xiv.23. 

* Cf. Matthew xxv.45. 

56. There cannot possibly be any faith but the faith of charity. 
One who has not charity can have no faith at all, for charity is 
the very soil in which faith is planted. It is its heart, from which 
it exists and lives. “The ancients accordingly compared love and 
charity to the heart, and faith to the lungs, both of them in the 
breast. “This comparison has real likeness, for if a man pretends 
to a life of faith without charity, it is like having life from the 
lungs alone apart from the heart, manifestly impossible. ‘Therefore 
the ancients called all things of charity things of the heart, and the 
things of faith without charity they said were of the mouth only, 
or of the lungs by the influx of breath into speech. “Thence came 
the ancient forms of speech about good and truth—that these must 
go forth from the heart. A.1843. 

57. The only faith that endures with a person springs from 
heavenly love. ‘Those without love have only knowledge, or per- 
suasion. Just to believe in truth and in the Word is not faith. 
Faith is to love truth, and to will and do it from an inward affec- 
tion for it. H.482. 

58. Do you, my friend, flee evil, and do good, and believe in 
the Lord with your whole heart and your whole soul, and the 
Lord will love you, and give! you love for doing, and faith for 
believing. “Then you will do good from love, and from a faith 
which is confidence will you believe. If you persevere in this, a 
reciprocal conjunction will take place, and one that is perpetual, 
indeed is salvation itself, and everlasting life. T’.484. 


* There is referred to here that thinking and willing “from the Lord” 
on which we commented before (n.40), 


174 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


59. Noman can cleanse himself of evils by his own power and 
abilities; but neither can this be done without the power and abil- 
ities of the human being, used as his own. If this strength were 
not to all appearance his own, no one would be able to fight against 
the flesh and its lusts, which, nevertheless, is enjoined upon all men. 
He would not think of combat. But because he is a reasoning 
being, he must resist evils from the power and abilities given him 
by the Lord, which appear to him as his own—an appearance ! 
which is granted for the sake of regeneration, imputation,? con- 
junction and salvation. ‘T’.438. 


* Not an illusion; a steady fact.of human consciousness. 
?“Tmputation” means the ascription of character to one. 


60. The Divine order is that the human being should dispose 
himself for the reception of God, and prepare himself as a recep- 
tacle and dwelling into which God many enter and abide as in His 
temple. A man must do this from himself, but still acknowledge 
that it is from God. He must acknowledge this, because he does 
not feel the presence and operation of God, although God being 
most perfectly present, operates in him all the good of love! and 
the truth of faith. According to this order every man proceeds 
and must proceed that from being natural he may become spiritual. 


e105: 


*“Good of love’’—any feeling or act inspired by love for God or man. 
“Good of faith’ may be the same feeling or deed but its inspiration is 
faith rather than love. 


61. ‘Proprium’! is the totality of the evil and falsity which 
springs from love of self and of the world, and from not believing 
in the Lord or the Word, but in self; and thinking that what can- 
not be apprehended from sense and knowledge is nothing. In this 
way men become nothing but what is evil and false, and so look 
at things perversely. What is evil they see as good, the good as 
evil; what is false they see as true, and the true, as false; things 
that are, they suppose to be nothing, and those that are nothing, 
they suppose to be everything. A.210. 


* Literally ‘one’s own.’ Life and all the good it holds is from God; if 
anything is man’s “own” it is the perversion he works. 


62. ‘The human being who thinks?! that he lives of himself is 
in a false persuasion. In believing that he has life from himself he 
attributes every evil and falsity to himself—which he would never 


do if he believed as the fact really is. A.150. 


*He will feel so, but his reflection can be expected to correct sensation. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 175 


63. The human being is not born into actual evils, but only 
into an inclination to evils, with a greater or less proclivity to 
certain evils. After death, therefore, a man is not judged for any 
inherited evil, but for the actual evils! which he himself has com- 
mitted. “This is plain from the following statute of the Lord: 
“The father shall not die for the son, and the son shall not die for 
the father; every one shall die for his own sin” (Deuteronomy 


eri) Ganleso1 (2) 
1 And for these only as they still are his life and habit. 


64. Inherited evil is derived from one’s parents and the parents 
of parents, i.e., from grandparents and ancestors successively. 
Every evil that these acquired by actual living, so that by frequent 
use or habit it became a part of their nature, was transmitted to 
their children, and to them became inherited evil, in addition to 
what was implanted in the parents from grandparents and an- 
cestors. 

But what inherited evil is few know. It is believed to be merely 
doing evil; but it is willing and thence thinking evil. Inherited 
evil is both in the will itself and the thought therefrom. It is 
known in the enjoyment felt when evil happens to another. The 
root lies deep; for the interior form itself which receives good and 
truth from heaven or through heaven from the Lord, becomes so 
depraved, and so to speak distorted, that when good and truth flow 
in from the Lord, they are reflected back, or perverted, or suffo- 


cated. A.4317. 


65. The human being inclines to the nature he has hereditarily, 
and lapses into it. “Thus he strengthens any evil in it, and also 
adds others himself. ‘These evils are quite opposed to the spiritual 
life. They destroy it. Unless, therefore, a man receives new life 
from the Lord, which is the spiritual life, he is condemned; for he 
wills nothing else and thinks nothing else than concerns him and 


the world. N.176. 


66. Apart from Divine revelation the human being could know 
nothing of eternal life, or even of God; still less of love to God 
and of faith in Him. For he is born in utter ignorance, and must 
obtain all his knowledge, and form his understanding, from worldly 
objects. Moreover, man inherits by birth every evil proceeding 
from love of self and of the world; and the delights thence arising 
continually prevail, and insinuate into his mind things diametrically 
opposed to whatever is of God. Hence it is, that man is naturally 


176 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


destitute of the knowledge of eternal life; and hence the necessity 
of Divine revelation, to communicate the knowledge to him. 

That the evils of love of self and the world induce such ignorance 
about the things of eternal life, appears plainly from the case cf 
many in the church, learned as well as unlearned, who, although 
they know from revelation that there is a God, a heaven and a hell, 
that there is eternal life, and that that life is to be acquired by 
good of love and faith, still lapse into unbelief on these matters. 
Hence it is evident to what an appalling extent ignorance would 
prevail, had no revelation been given. N.249, 250. 


67. Brute animals are actuated in no other way than by loves 
and the affections from these into which they have been created and 
afterwards born. Every animal is carried whither his affection 
and love draw it. As a result, animals are also in all items of 
knowledge which belong at all to their love. . . . Birds know 
how to build their nests, lay their eggs, brood upon them, hatch 
their young, and how to feed them, and this without any instruc- 
tion, merely from love toward their offspring. In like manner 
they know what things to eat for food, and how to seek them... . 
All these items of knowledge are included in their loves, and dwell 
there from their first origin. They are born into them, for they 
are in the order of their nature into which they were created; and 
thereafter are actuated by a general influx from the spiritual marl 
If the human being were in the order into which he was created, 
namely in love to the neighbor, and in love to the Lord (for these 
loves are proper to the human being), he above all animals would 
be born not only into matters of knowledge, but also into all 
spiritual truths and celestial goods, and so into all wisdom and 
intelligence. For he can think of the Lord, and be united with 
Him in love, and thus be raised to what is Divine and eternal, as 
brute animals? cannot. In the case supposed, the human being 
would be guided solely by general influx from the Lord through 
the spiritual world. But as he is not born into order, but contrary 
to his order, he is therefore born into ignorance of all things; and 
for this reason it has been provided that he may afterward be 
re-born, and thus come into as much intelligence and wisdom as 
he receives of good,” and of truth through good, in freedom. 


Intl aa ay 


*Recur to nn.9, 10. 

* Truth lived up to (which is good) alone becomes intelligence and 
wisdom. 

68. “The man who does not receive spiritual life, i.e., who is not 
created anew by the Lord, cannot enter heaven. ‘This the Lord 


STANDARD PASSAGES 177 


teaches in John 111.3: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a 
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” N.173. 


69. A man can by no means of himself act from spiritual justice 
and fidelity. For while every one inherits from his parents a dis- 
position to do what is just and good for the sake of himself and 
the world, no man inherits a disposition to do it for the sake? of 
what is good and just. “Therefore only the man who worships the 
Lord and acts from Him when acting from himself, attains to 
spiritual charity, and becomes imbued ? with it by the practice of 


ipeed 425, 


*Note how much the disinterested life is the spiritual life. Cf. nn. 30, 
39; Matthew v.43-48. 

* Always the teaching wants a man not only to do but to become charity. 
n.43, note 2. 


70. It is evident from all reason that a man must be regen- 
erated; for he is born into evils? of every kind from his parents, 
and these have their seat in his natural man, which in itself is 
diametrically opposed to the spiritual man. Yet he was born for 
heaven, and he does not come to heaven unless he becomes spiritual, 
and this he does by regeneration only. From this it necessarily 
follows that the natural man with its lusts? must be subdued, 
subjugated and inverted, and that otherwise man cannot approach 
a single step toward heaven, but lowers himself more and more 
into hell. Who does not see this, who believes that he was born 
into evils of every kind, and acknowledges that there are good and 
evil, and that the one of these is contrary to the other, and believes 
in a life after death, a hell and a heaven, that evils make hell and 
goods heaven? ‘The natural man viewed in himself,* does not 
differ at all from beasts in nature; like them he is wild, but as to 
will; he differs from them in the possession of understanding. ‘The 
understanding can be raised above the lusts of the will, and not 
only see but also moderate them. Consequently man can think 
from understanding and speak from thought, which beasts cannot 
do. Of what quality man is from birth, and of what quality he 
would be if he were not regenerated, may be seen from fierce 
animals of every kind; that he would be a tiger, a panther, a 
leopard, a wild boar, a scorpion, a tarantula, a viper, a crocodile, 
etc. Wherefore if he were not transformed by regeneration into 
a sheep, what would he be but a devil among devils in hell? Then 
if such men were not restrained by the laws of the kingdom, 
would they not from innate ferocity rush upon one another, and 
slaughter one another, or strip each other even of necessary cloth- 


178 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


ing? How many of the human race are there who were not born 
satyrs, and priapi, and four-footed lizards? And who, amdng 
them all, does not, without regeneration, become an-ape? External 
morality, which is learned for the sake of covering up their 
internals, makes this to be so. I’.574. 

This must be understood to mean “tendencies to evil”: see n. 63. 

* Swedenborg uses this term broadly to mean evil affections and desires. 


’This mental dissection the teaching often makes, “viewing man in 
himself,’ as he would be apart from Divine and heavenly influences. 


71. The regeneration of the human being is not effected in a 
moment, but gradually, from-the beginning to the end of life in the 
world; and is continued and perfected afterwards. T’.610. 


72. When a man is being regenerated, he is not regenerated 
rapidly but slowly. For all things which he had thought, intended 
and done from infancy, have added themselves to his life, and have 
made it. ‘They have also formed such a connection among them- 
selves that one cannot be removed unless all are removed with it. 
For an evil man is an image of hell, and a good man an image of 
heaven; and evils and falsities with an evil man also have such a 
connection among themselves as exists among the infernal societies 
of which he is a part. Goods and truths, also, with a good man, 
have such a connection among themselves as exists among the 
heavenly societies of which he is a part. 

Hence it is evident that evils and falsities with an evil man 
cannot be removed suddenly, but as far as goods and truths are 
implanted in their order and interiorly; for heaven with man 
removes hell in him. If this were done suddenly, the man would 
expire, for all the particulars which are in connection and form, 
would be disturbed, and violence would be done his life. 

Regeneration or the implantation of the life of heaven in the 
human being commences in infancy, and continues even to the last 
period of his life in the world; and after that the work goes on 
forever to greater and greater perfection. A.9334. 

*There is in this phrase the thought of the spirit as a substantial 
organism itself, organized to live life either aright or distorted. In any 


case, the life is a fabric which tends to hold together, as does the whole 
world of evil and disorder. and the world of right life. 


73. Never could a man live—certainly not as a human being— 
unless he had something vital in himself, i.e., some innocence, 
neighborly love, and mercy. “This a man receives from the Lord 
in infancy and childhood. What he receives then is treasured up 
in him, and is called in the Word the remnant ? or remains, which 


STANDARD PASSAGES 179 


are of the Lord alone in him, and they make it possible for him 
truly to be a man on reaching adult age. ‘These states are the 
elements of his regeneration, and he is led into them; for the Lord 


works by means of them. ‘These remains are also called the 
“living soul” * in all flesh. A.1050. 


* Innocence’ (as the Theological Works mean it) is the readiness to be 
led by truth, or not by self. 

*The Scriptures (Joel 11.32, Zephaniah iii.13, Isaiah x.20) speak of 
the remnant in Israel, i.e., so much of the people as holds to the Lord, and 
is led by Him into their true destiny. The Theological Works find an 
analogy in the individual life, in the preservation of its best possibilities. 

* Genesis ix.5 is under interpretation. 


74, All states? of innocence from infancy onward, of love to- 
wards parents, brothers, teachers and friends; of charity to the 
neighbor, and also of mercy to the poor and needy; all states of 
goodness and truth, with their goods and truths, impressed on the 
memory, are preserved in a man by the Lord, and are stored up 
unconsciously to himself in his internal man, and are carefully kept 
from evils and falsities. ‘They are all so preserved by the Lord ? 
that not the smallest of them is lost. Every state from infancy 
even to extreme old age not only remains in the other life, but also 
recurs. Recurring,® these states are such as they were during a 
man’s abode in the world. Not only goods and truths, stored up 
in the memory, remain and recur, but likewise all states of inno- 
cence and charity; and when states of evil and false recur, or of 
wickedness and phantasy,* these are attempered ° by the former 
through the Divine operation of the Lord. A.561. 

Note the experiences of the spirit which are “remains.” 

* Cf. Matthew xviii.10. 

® What a way of emphasizing that what one takes from life here is what 
he is. On this recurrence of states see T.766e and Ezekiel xviii.22, 24. 

“The unreality of the thought in which the evil are is brought out by 
calling all their mental life “phantasy.” 

> Ezekiel xviii.22. 24. 

75. The omnipotent God created the world from the order 
within Him, i.e., into the order in which He is, and in accordance 
with which He rules; and He impressed upon the universe and 
on each and all things in it its own order, on bird and fish and 
worm, every tree and even blade of grass, on each its own order. 

. The laws of order enjoined on the human being ? are that 
he should acquire for himself truths from the Word, and reflect 
on them naturally, and as far as he can, rationally, and thus 
acquire for himself a natural faith. “The laws of order on the 
part of God then are, that He will draw nigh and fill these truths 


180 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


with His Divine light, and thus fill the man’s natural faith (which 
is mere knowledge and persuasion) with a Divine essence. In this 
and in no other way can faith become saving. It is the same with 
charity. But some particulars shall be mentioned briefly. In 
accordance with His laws, God is able to remit sins to a man oniy 
so far as the man, in Recordadee with his laws, refrains from them. 
God is able to regenerate a man spiritually only so far as the man, 
in accordance with his laws, regenerates himself naturally. God 
is in the unceasing endeavour to regenerate man, and so save him; 
but this He cannot accomplish except as the man prepares himself 
as a receptacle, and thus levels the way and opens the door for 


(Od mumilon/ 5 C2) 2 


*The teaching always thinks of the creation as a living world and 
developing order. 

* The human being has his part in realizing the intended order of things. 

°This is an interesting way of putting man’s part. 


76. As one views the I'wo Tables of the Decalogue, it is plain 
that they are so conjoined that God from His table! looks to man, 
and that man in turn looks from his table to God. ‘Thus the 
regard is reciprocal. God for His part never ceases to regard 
man, and to put into operation such things as are for his salvation; 
and if man receives and does the things in his table, reciprocal con- 
junction is effected, and the Lord’s words to the lawyer will have 
come to pass, “This do, and thou shalt live”? T’.287. 


*'The earlier commandments have to do with man’s relation to God; 
the later. with man’s relation to man. 
* Luke x.28. 


77. Every man who from natural is becoming spiritual under- 
goes two states. . . . In the first, which is called the state of 
reformation, man is in full liberty of acting according to the 
rational of his understanding ; and in the second, which is the state 
of regeneration, he is in a similar liberty, but then he wills and 
acts, thinks and speaks, from a new love and a new intelligence 
which are from the Lord; for in the first state the understanding 
acts the first part, and the will the second; in the other the will 
acts the first, and the understanding the second; but still the under- 
standing acts from the will, and not the will through the under- 
standing. “The conjunction of good and truth, of charity and 
faith, and of internal and external man, is not effected otherwise. 

These two states are represented by various things in the uni- 
verse. For they are according to Divine order, and Divine order 
fills all things, even to the minutest detail in the universe. The 


STANDARD PASSAGES 181 


first state is represented with every man by the state of his infancy 
and childhood, even to puberty, youth and early manhood, which 
is a state of humiliation before one’s parents, and so of obedience, 
and of instructions from masters and ministers. But the other 
state is represented by the state of the same person when he 
becomes his own master, and freely exercises his own will and 
understanding, in which state he has control in his own house. 
. , . The Lord says, ‘If the Son shall make you free, ye shall 
be free indeed.’ John viii.36. T.105(2), 106. 


78. During the process of man’s regeneration, the truth, which 
is of faith, apparently precedes, and the good, which is of charity, 
apparently follows; but when man is regenerated, then the good, 
which is of charity, manifestly precedes, and the truth, which is 
of faith, manifestly follows. However, in the former case, it is 
only an appearance,! whereas in the latter it is essentially so. 


A.3995. (Research references: A.4245(2), 4928e.) 


1 The initiative, so far as man’s consciousness is concerned, is his; in 
truth, it is the Lord’s. Compare the thought of Hymn 388 in the 
Magnificat. 


79. Reformation is effected in this order: A man must first fill 
his memory with knowledges + of good and truth, by which he is 
to acquire the light of reason. Especially must he learn that God 
is one, that the Lord is God of heaven and earth, that there is a 
heaven and a hell, that there is a life after death, and thatthe 
Word is holy. 

Next he must learn what evils are sins, first from the Deca- 
logue, and afterwards from the Word everywhere, and must come 
to see that they are sins against God, and that they therefore with- 
hold and separate man from heaven, and condemn and sentence 
him to hell. 

Consequently the first thing of reformation is to refrain from 
sins, shun them, and finally turn away from them. But to refrain 
from them, shun them and turn away from them, a man must pray 
to the Lord for help. He must shun them, also, because they are 
opposed to the Word, i.e., to the Lord, and so to heaven, and be- 
cause in themselves they are infernal. 

As far as a man thus shuns evils, and turns from them because 
they are sins, and thinks about heaven, and salvation and eternal 
life, so far he is adopted by the Lord, and united to heaven, and 
endowed with spiritual affection,? which is such that he not only 
wishes to know truths, but to understand and will and do them, 
too. So man is reformed by the Lord and becomes a new man, Le., 


182. AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


a regenerate human being, and an angel of heaven, and has heavenly 
love and life. E.837. 
‘The Latin has two words here, knowledge as so much information 


(‘scientia’) and knowledge appreciated and understood (‘cognitio’). 
7 Note the definition which follows. 


80. ‘The conjunction of God with man, and of man with God, 
is taught in the two Tables which were written with the finger of 
God, called the Tables of the Covenant. ‘These Tables? obtain 
with all nations that have any religion. From the first Table they 
know that God is to be acknowledged, hallowed and worshipped. 
From the second table they know that a man is not to steal, either 
openly or by trickery, nor to commit adultery, nor to kill, whether 
by blow or hatred,” nor to bear false witness in a court of justice, 
or before the world, and further that he ought not to will those 
evils. From this Table a man knows the evils which he must shun, 
and in the measure that he knows them and shuns them, God con- 
joins him to Himself, and in turn from His ‘Table gives man to 
acknowledge, hallow and worship Him. So, also, He gives him 
not to meditate evils, and, in so far as he does not will them, to 
know truths freely. E.1179. 

tT.e., the precepts in them. 
* Cf. Matthew v.21, 22. 

81. He who would be saved, must confess his sins, and do 
repentance. ‘’o confess sins' is to know evils, to see them in 
oneself, to acknowledge them, to make oneself guilty and condemn 
oneself on account of them. Done before God, this is to confess 
sins. I’o do repentance is to desist from sins after one has thus 
confessed them and from a humble heart has besought forgiveness, 
and then to live a new life according to the precepts of charity 
and faith. 

One who merely acknowledges generally that he is a sinner, 
making himself guilty of all evils, without examining himself, 
i.e., without seeing his sins, makes a confession, but not the con- 
fession of repentance. Inasmuch as he does not know his evils, 
he lives as before. 

One who lives the life of charity and faith does repentance daily. 
He reflects upon the evils in him, acknowledges them, guards 
against them, and beseeches the Lord for help. For of oneself one 
continually lapses toward evil; but he is continually raised by the 
Lord and led to good. 

Repentance of the mouth and not of the life is not repentance. 
Nor are sins pardoned on repentance of the mouth, but on re- 


STANDARD PASSAGES 183 


pentance of the life. Sins are pardoned man constantly by the 
Lord, for He is mercy itself; but still they adhere to man, how- 
ever he supposes they have been remitted. Nor are they removed 
from him, save by a life according to the precepts of true faith. So 
far as he lives according to these precepts, sins are removed; and 
so far as they are removed, they are remitted.2 N.159-165. 

*Under this clause there is described what was discussed as ‘self- 
examination’ in the Outline, § 35. 

* An evil which once has been active in one, is never ousted from one, 


but in any mastery of it is pushed back out of the active personality. In 
this conception of the removal of evil the teaching gives the radical 


2) “cc 


meaning to the Gospel word for “forgive” or “pardon; remit” or 
“send back” is its equivalent. See Excerpt n.88. 


82. When a man shuns evils as sins, he flees them because they 
are contrary to the Lord and to His Divine laws; and then he 
prays to the Lord for help and for power to resist them—a power 
which is never denied + when it is asked. By these two means a 
man is cleansed of evils. He cannot be cleansed of evils if he 
only looks to the Lord and prays. For, then, after he has prayed, 
he believes that he is quite without sins,? or that they have been 
forgiven, by which he understands that they are taken away. But 
then he still remains in them; and to remain in them means to 
increase them.? Nor are evils removed only by shunning them; 
for then the man looks to himself, and thereby strengthens the 
origin df evil, which was that he turned himself back from the 
Lord and turned to himself. C.146. 

* Matthew vii.7, 8. 

27 Why? 

83. Prayer, in itself considered, is speech with God. There is 
then some inward view of the objects of prayer, and answering to 
them something like an influx into the perception or thought. 
Thus there is a kind of opening of the man’s interiors toward 
God, with a difference according to the man’s state, and accord- 
ing to the nature of the object of the prayer. If one prays out 
of love and faith and only about and for things heavenly and 
spiritual,! then there appears in the prayer something like revela- 
tion, which shows itself in the affection of the suppliant, in hope, 
solace, or an inner gladness. A.2535. 


*In view of what the spiritual life is, does this shut out prayer for things 
of our present existence? 


84. Without moral struggle? no one is regenerated, and many 
spiritual wrestlings succeed one after another, For, since re- 


184 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


generation has for its end that the life of the old man may die, 
and the new and heavenly life be planted, there will unfail- 
ingly be combat. The life of the old man resists, and is unwilling 
to be extinguished, and the life of the new man cannot enter, 
except where the life of the old has been extinguished. From this 
it is plain that there is combat, and ardent combat,” inasmuch as 


it is for life. A.8403. 


1Swedenborg’s word here is ‘tentatio’ or ‘temptation’ (so translated 
usually) ; but it means not what it does usually (incitement to evil), but 
combat with evil. 

2In P.25 this combat when acute is called ‘temptation,’ but when it is a 
relatively quiet alteration of character ‘fermentation.’ 


85. Very few are capable of knowing what is accomplished by 
temptations, and the combats of temptations. “They are means 
whereby evils and falses are loosened and shaken off in a man, by 
which horror is excited for them, and the conscience not only 
formed but confirmed, and thus man is regenerated. For this 
reason those who are regenerated! are let into combats, and 
undergo temptations. “This is effected in the other life, if not in 
the life of the body, with all capable of regeneration. “The Lord’s 
Church for this reason is called militant. A.1692. 


+ James1.2. 


86. The Lord alone fights for man in temptations. If a man 
does not believe! this, and that the Lord alone conquers for him, 
he undergoes only an external temptation which does not conduce 
to his salvation. N.195. 


* Genuine spiritual struggle implies that great issues are being worked 
out in the world under God, and that one casts his effort in on God’s side, 
and also has His help. 


87. When a man is regenerated, he becomes altogether an.. 
other, and a new, man. While his appearance and his speech are 
the same, his mind is not. For his mind is then open toward 
heaven, and love for the Lord and charity to the neighbor dwell 
in it, together with faith. It is the mind which makes another 
and a new man. ‘The change of state cannot be perceived in the 
man’s body, but in his spirit. When the body is put off, his spirit 
appears and in altogether another form, too, if the man has been 
regenerated. For then it has the form of love and charity, with 
inexpressible beauty, in the place of the earlier form, which was 
one of hatred and cruelty, with a deformity also inexpressible. 


Ng OV ee 


STANDARD PASSAGES 185 


88. It is an error of the age to believe that evils have been 
separated, and even cast out, when they have been forgiven. It 
has been granted me to know from heaven that no evil into which 
a man is born and which he himself actually imbibes, is separated ! 
from him, but is only removed so as not to appear. I formerly 
held ? the belief that is held by most in the world, that when evils 
are forgiven, they are cast out, and are washed and wiped away 
as dirt is washed from the face by water. But this is not true of 
evils or sins. “They all remain. And when after repentance they 
are forgiven, they are moved from the center to the sides; and 
then what is in the center, because it is directly under view, 
appears as in the light of day, and what is at the sides is in the 
shade, and sometimes as it were in the darkness of night. And as 
evils are not separated but only removed, i.e., dismissed to the 
sides, and as man can pass from the center to the parts round 
about, it is possible for him to return to his evils which he had 
supposed had been cast out. For man is such that he can pass 
from one affection into another, and sometimes into an opposite 
one, thus from one center to another, his affection, so long as he 
is in it, making the center, for then he is in its delight and in its 


het he 7.9° 


* Psychology feels that no movement of life in us fails to leave its record 
in the total structure of our life; greed, for instance, gets written even 
on the face. 

* The teachings which Swedenborg was called on to grasp and publish 
(n.4) often involved a radical change of thought on his part. 


89. The heavenly proprium exists from the new will which is 
given by the Lord (to the regenerate), and differs from man’s 
proprium in this: that they no longer respect themselves in each 
and all things they do, and learn and teach, but the neighbor, the 
public, the church, the kingdom of the Lord, and so the Lord 
Himself. The ends of life are what are changed; the ends of 
having regard to lower things, namely, the world and self, are 
removed, and the ends of having respect to higher things are sub- 
stituted in their place. The ends of life are nothing else but man’s 
life itself. For ends are the very will of man, and his very loves, 
inasmuch as what he loves he wills and regards as an end. 

He who is gifted with a heavenly proprium is also in tranquillity 
and peace. For he trusts in the Lord, and believes that nothing 
of evil befalls him, and knows that lusts do not infest him. More- 
over, one who is in heavenly proprium is in freedom, for to be led 
by the Lord is freedom.' He is led in good, from good, to good. 
It may be plain then that such a man is in blessedness and happi- 


186 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


ness, for nothing disturbs,’ nothing of self-love, thus nothing of 
enmity, of hatred, of revenge; nor anything of the love of the 
world, thus nothing of fraud, of fear, of restlessness. A.5660. 


1 Psalm cxix.145. 
2? Psalm cxix.165. 


90. The human being is quite ignorant that he is governed by 
the Lord through angels and spirits, and that there are at least 
two spirits with a man, and two angels. Through the spirits a 
communication of the man with the world of spirits is effected, 
and through the angels, with heaven. As long as a man is not 
regenerated, he is governed quite otherwise than when he is re- 
generated. While unregenerated, there are evil spirits with him, 
who dominate him so fully that the angels, though present, can 
scarcely do more than guide him, so that he shall not hurl himself 
into the lowest evil, and bend him to some good—to some good by 
means of his own desires, indeed, and to some truth through even 
fallacies of sense. “Then, through the spirits who are with him, he 
has communication with the world of spirits, but not so much with 
heaven, for the evil spirits rule with him, and the angels only avert 
their rule. When, however, a man is regenerated, then the angels 
rule and inspire in him all good and truth, and a horror and dread 
of evil and falsity. “The angels lead the man indeed, but serve only 
as ministers, for it is the Lord alone, Who, by angels and spirits, 
governs man. A.50. 


91. It is the same whether you say a spiritual man or a 
spiritual church. For a spiritual man is a church in particular 
and many are the church in general. Unless a man individually 
were a church, there could be no church? in general. An assembly 
in general is what, in common language, is called a church; but in 
order that there may be any church each one in that assembly 
must be a church individually, every general involving parts like 


itself. A.4292, 


* This will be a body not humanly definable, like the ‘assembly’ next 
mentioned. 


92. The church on earth is the foundation of heaven, for the 
influx of good and truth from the Lord through the heavens 
finally terminates in the goods and truths which are with the man 
of the church.! When therefore the man of the church is in such 
a perverted state as no longer to admit the influx of good and 
truth, the powers of the heavens are said” to be ‘shaken.’ It is 
therefore always provided by the Lord that something of the 


STANDARD PASSAGES 187 


church shall remain; and that when an old church perishes, 
new one shall be inaugurated. A.4060. 


*'To be ‘of the church’ one must be party to the spiritual life realized in 
a community (this community existing, in the last analysis, in the Lord’s 
sight alone). One is ‘in the church’ when one is within the tract or area 
where a certain religious growth is possible and provided for, in knowl- 
edge of the Lord, and in possession of the Scriptures. ‘The two phrases 
should be carefully distinguished. 

* Matthew xxiv.29. 


93. ‘There have been four churches on this earth since the day 
of creation; a first, to be called the Adamic, a second, to be called 
the Noachic, a third, the Israelitish, and a fourth, the Christian. 
After these four churches a new one will arise, which is to be 
truly Christian, foretold in Daniel + and in the Apocalypse,’ and 
by the Lord Himself in the Evangelists,? and looked for by the 
Apostles. Coro. Summary, I, VIII. 


‘On interpretation of these books in their spiritual sense. 

* As in Mark xiii, the Lord’s Return being for the purpose of reviving 
the spiritual life (cf. § 1) 

*In that they expected Him to return. 


94, The church and heaven are as one man from the Lord, the 
forms of which (called lower and higher organic forms, also in- 
terior and exterior) are made up of all who love uses by doing 
them. The uses themselves are what compose that Man, for it is 
a spiritual Man which does not consist of persons, but of the uses 
pertaining to persons. In this Man, however, are all persons 
who receive from the Lord the love of uses. These are they who 
do them for the neighbor’s sake, for uses’ sake, and for the Lord’s 
sake. And since this Man is the Divine that goes forth from the 
Lord, and the Divine going forth is the Lord in the church and in 
heaven, it follows that they are all in the Lord. D.L.xui.3. 


95. By man in the most general sense is meant the whole human 
racecar general sense the men of one kingdom taken together 
are meant ; in a sense less general those of a single province of a 
kingdom; in a sense still less general those of a city; in a par- 
ticular sense those of a household; and in an individual sense every 
man. In the Lord’s view, the tale human race is as one man; 
all in a kingdom are as one man, also; likewise all in a province, 
all in a city, and all in a household. It is not the men themselves 
that are thus seen together, but the uses! in them. “They who are? 
good uses, i.e, who perform uses from the Lord, when viewed 
together, are seen as a man perfect in form and beautiful. These 


188 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


are such as perform uses for the sake of uses, i.e., love them be- 
cause they are uses of the household, of the city, province, kingdom, 
or whole world. Those who perform uses, however, not for the 
uses’ sake, but for the sake of themselves alone, or the world 
alone, likewise appear before the Lord as one human being, but 
as an imperfect and deformed man. From so much it can be seen 
that the Lord has regard to men in the world, to each according to 
his use, and to men in the mass according to uses united in the 
form of the human being. By uses are meant the uses of one’s 
function, which are uses of his office, pursuit and occupation. In 
the baie sight these uses are, in very truth, good works. 


D.-L.vi. 14. 


*The term means services, but has a broader meaning, of any and all 
useful activities, even to processes of nature. With respect to the human 
being, it also implies that the spirit of service is present. See the last 
sentences in the excerpt for a definition. 

* Cf. on this way of speaking n.43, note 2. 


96. Man is taught by the Lord by means of the Word, and 
by means of doctrine and preaching from the Word, and thus 
immediately by the Lord alone. The Word must needs be taught 
mediately through parents, teachers, preachers, books and espe- 
cially the reading of it. Nevertheless it is not taught by these, 
but by the Lord? through them. Preachers know this, too, and 
say they speak not from themselves but from the spirit of God, and 
that all truth, like all good, is from God. They can indeed pro- 
claim the Word, and bring it to the understanding of many, but 
not to any one’s heart; and what is not in the heart perishes in 
the understanding; the ‘heart’ meaning man’s love. Man is led 
and taught by the Lord alone, and is led and taught by Him 
immediately when this is done from the Word. P.171, 172. 


*The Lord’s spirit alone makes the Word fruitful. Cf. n.74. 


97. Baptism was instituted for a sign that a man is of the 
church and for a memorial that he is to be regenerated. For the 
washing of baptism is no other than spiritual washing, which is 
regeneration. All regeneration is effected by the Lord through 
truths of faith and a life according to them. Baptism, accordingly, 
testifies that a man is of the Church and that he can be regen- 
erated; for it is in the church that the Lord is acknowledged, 
Who regenerates man, and there the Word is, where are truths of 
faith, by which is regeneration. N.202, 203. ‘The sign of the 


cross which a child * receives on the forehead and breast at baptism 


STANDARD PASSAGES 189 


is a sign of inauguration into the acknowledgment and worship 


or the Lord. (P7682) 


The recognition given infant baptism in the Theological Works is con- 
fined to such incidental reference, but is clear, and complete. Cf. T.677 
(2, 5). 


98. The Holy Supper was instituted that by means of it there 
might be conjunction of the church* with heaven, and thus with 
the Lord. When one takes the bread, which is the Body, one is 
conjoined with the Lord by the good of love? to Him, from * 
Him; and when one takes the wine, which is the Blood, one is 


conjoined by the good of faith in Him, from Him. N.210, 213. 


* Note that the church as a whole, not the individual communicant is 
in view. 

* See n.60. 

* Not only that right feeling, ¢.g., is from the Lord, but it is so regarded 
and sought. 


99. Two things ought to be in order among men, the things 
of heaven, and the things of the world. The things of heaven are 
called ecclesiastical things, and those of the world civil things. 
Order cannot be maintained without governors. Governors over 
the things among men which relate to heaven, or over ecclesiastical 
matters, are called priests, and their office the priesthood. With 
respect to priests, they ought to teach men the way to heaven, and 
also to lead them. They ought to teach according to the doctrine 
of their church derived from the Word, and they ought to lead 
them to live according to it. Priests who teach truths, and 
thereby lead to the good of life, and so to the Lord, are good 
shepherds of the sheep; but they who only teach, and do not lead 
to the good of life, and so to the Lord, are evil shepherds. Priests 
ought not to claim to themselves any power over the souls of men, 
for they do not know in what state the interiors of a human 
being are; still less ought they to claim the power of opening and 
shutting heaven, for that power belongs to the Lord alone. Dignity 
and honor ought to be paid priests on account of the sanctity of 
their office. The honor of an employment is not in the person, but 
is adjoined to him according to the dignity of the thing he ad- 
ministers. All personal honor is the honor of wisdom and the 


feamor tne words Neoll 312.5514.9315%3516; 317; 


100. The human being has been so created that as to his in- 
ward being he can not die. For he can? believe in God, and also 


190 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


love God, and thus be united to God in faith and love; and to be 
united to God is to live to eternity. N.223. 


*Note that it is in this capacity of the human soul that immortality 
inheres; not in realization of the capacity. 


101. Angels know nothing about death, or sickness, wherefore 
neither have they any idea of such things. When a man reads of 
death and sickness, therefore, they have an idea of the continua- 
tion of life and of resurrection, for when a man dies he only puts 
off what served him for use in the world, and enters on the life in 
which he had been as to his spirit. ‘Chis is the thought that pre- 
sents! itself to the angels when a man reads of dying and being 
sick. In like manner the idea of regeneration presents itself, 
inasmuch as this is resurrection into life, for the man had before 
been spiritually dead, and on regeneration became alive, and a 
son of resurrection. “Che human being that desires heaven even in 
the life of the body entertains no other thought about death, or 
the preceding sickness, than as being resurrection into life. For 
when he thinks about heaven, he withdraws himself from an idea 
of the body, especially when he is sick and draws near to death. 
Hence it is plain that the spiritual idea about the death of the 
body is about newness of life. As a result when resurrection or 
regeneration is the subject in heaven, and it is conveyed down- 
wards, and determined into things of the world, it falls into 


things like these. A.6221. 


*That is, in the Scriptures, in the inner reaches of which angelic 
thought is moving. 


102. ‘Those who think from an idea of space, as all in the 
world do, perceive no otherwise than that hell is far distant from 
man, and that heaven is so too. But the case is otherwise. Heaven 
and hell are near to man, yes, in man; hell in an evil man, and 
heaven in the good man. Moreover, after death every one comes 
into that hell or that heaven in which he has been while in the 
world. But his state is then changed. ‘The hell which was not 
perceived in the world becomes perceptible then, and the heaven 
which was not perceived in the world becomes perceptible, the 
heaven full of all happiness, and the hell of all unhappiness. ‘That 
heaven is within us, the Lord teaches in Luke: “The kingdom of 
God is within you” (xvii.21). A.8918(4). 


103. Heaven is in the human being; and those who have heaven 
in them come into heaven. Heaven in the human being is to 
acknowledge the Divine, and to be led by the Divine. For the 


STANDARD PASSAGES 19} 


first and chief thing of every religion is to acknowledge the 
Divine. H.319. Every angel receives the heaven which is around 
him according to the heaven which is in him. This shows plainly 
how much he is deceived who thinks that to come into heaven is 
only to be raised among angels, whatever he may be as to his in- 
terior life, and thus that heaven may be conferred on any one by 
an act of unconditioned mercy; when the truth is, that if heaven 
is not within a person, nothing of the heaven around him flows 
in and is received. H.54. Hence it is evident that the states of 
the interiors make heaven, and that heaven is within every one, 
and not outside him; as the Lord also teaches, when He says, 
“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; neither 
shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of 
God is within you” (Luke xvii.20, 21). H.33. 


104. Evil in a man is hell within him (it is the same thing 
whether we speak of evil or hell). And since man is the cause of 
his own evil, he also brings himself into hell, and not the Lord. 
For the Lord is so far from bringing man into hell, that He 
delivers him from hell as far as a man does not will and love to be 
in his own evil. All a man’s will and love remain with him after 
death. He who wills and loves evil in the world, wills and loves 
the same evil in the other life; and then he no longer suffers him- 
self to be withdrawn from it. For a man who is in evil is bound 
to hell, and is actually there in spirit, and after death desires 
nothing more than to be where his evil is. H.547. 


105. In general, whatever appears in heaven has precisely the 
same appearance as the things in our material world in its three 
kingdoms; and such things appear before the eyes of the angels in 
just the same way as the things of the three kingdoms appear be- 
fore the eyes of men in the world. There appear there gold, silver, 
copper, tin, lead, stones precious and not precious, soil, lands, 
mountains, hills, valleys, waters, fountains, and other things of 
the mineral kingdom. ‘There appear pleasure grounds, gardens, 
forests, fruit-trees of every kind, lawns, fields of grain, meadows 
filled with flowers, plants, and grasses of every kind; also things 
produced by these, like oils, wines, drinks from juices, and other 
things of the vegetable kingdom. “There appear animals of the 
earth, birds of heaven, fishes of the sea, creeping things, and these 
of every kind, and so much like those on our earth that they cannot 
be distinguished. I have seen them, and could see no difference. 
Still there is this difference. The things seen in heaven are from 
a spiritual origin, but those seen in our world are from a material; 


192 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


and things from a spiritual origin affect the senses of the angels 
because their senses are spiritual, as those from a material origin 
affect the senses of men because these are material. For spiritual 
things are homogeneous with spiritual beings, and material things 
with material beings. It is said they are from a spiritual origin, 
because they have their existence from the Divine that goes forth 
from the Lord as a sun; and the Divine which goes forth from 
the Lord as a sun is spiritual. For the sun there is not fire, but 
Divine love, which appears before the eyes of the angels as does 
the sun of the world before men’s eyes; and whatever goes forth 
from the Divine love is Divine and spiritual. What proceeds 
appears in general as light, and is felt as heat; yet the light as well 
as the heat is spiritual. For the light is Divine wisdom, and 1s 
called Divine truth, and the heat is Divine love, and is called 
Divine good, consequently that light inwardly enlightens the 
understanding of the angels, and the heat inwardly fills the will 
of angels with the good of love. From that origin are all things 
which exist in heaven; and, as has been said, they appear in forms 
like those of our world with its three kingdoms. “They appear so 
due to the order of creation, which is that when things pertaining 
to the wisdom of the angels, and to their love, come down into the 
lower sphere in which the angels are in respect of their bodies and 
bodily sensation they are manifested in such forms and types. ‘The 
latter are correspondences. E.926. 


106. When the body is no longer able to perform its functions 
in the natural world, the man is said to die. Still the human 
being does not die; he is only separated from the bodily part which 
was of use to him in the world. The man himself lives. He lives, 
because he is a human being by virtue not of the body but of the 
spirit; for it is the spirit in man which thinks; and thought to- 
gether with affection makes the human being. It is plain, then, 
that when a man dies, he passes from one world into the other. 
. .. Lhe spirit of a man after separation remains a while in the 
body, but not after the motion of the heart has entirely ceased. 
This takes place with a variation according to the diseased condi- 
tion of which the man dies. As soon as the motion ceases, the 


man is resuscitated. “This is done by the Lord alone. H.445, 447. 


107. When a man passes from the natural world into the 
spiritual, he takes with him everything that belongs to him as a 
man except his earthly body. (This he leaves when he dies, nor 
does he ever resume it. N.225.) He is in a body as he was in the 
natural world; and to all appearance there is no difference. But 


STANDARD PASSAGES 193 


his body is spiritual, and is therefore separated or purified from 
things terrestrial. And when what is spiritual touches and sees 
what is spiritual, it is just the same as when what is natural 
touches and sees what is natural. . . . A human spirit also enjoys 
every sense, external and internal, which he enjoyed in the world. 
He sees as before, hears and speaks as before, smells and tastes 
as before, and feels when he is touched. He also longs, desires, 
craves, thinks, reflects, is stirred, loves, wills, as he did previously. 
. . . In a word, when a human being passes from the one life 
into the other, or from the one world into the other, it is as though 
he had passed from one place to another; and he carries with him 
all that he possesses in himself as a man. It cannot then be said 
that after death a man has lost anything that really belonged to 
him. He carries within him his natural memory,! too; for he 
retains all things whatsoever which he has heard, seen, read, 
learned, and thought in the world, from earliest infancy to the 
last of life. H.461. 


* Though this falls inactive, except on occasion, H.355; it is the basis 
of one’s life (see § 52). 


108. After death every human being comes first into the world 
of spirits, which is midway between heaven and hell, and there 
passes through his own times and states, and is prepared, accord- 
ing to his life, either for heaven or for hell. As long as one stays 
in this world of spirits he is called a spirit. One raised up out of 
that world into heaven is called an angel, while he who is cast 
down into hell is called either a satan or a devil. But as long as 
these continue in the world of spirits, one who is preparing for 
heaven is called an angelic spirit, and one preparing for hell an 
infernal spirit. In the meantime an angelic spirit is united with 
heaven, an infernal spirit, with hell. All spirits in the world of 
spirits are closely related to men; because men, in_ respect 
to the interiors of their minds, are in like manner between heaven 
and hell, and through these spirits they communicate with heaven 
or with hell according to their life. The world of spirits! is one 
thing, and the spiritual world! another; the world of spirits has 


just been described. The spiritual world includes that world, and 
heaven, and hell. W.140. 


* Note this distinction carefully. The whole excerpt is valuable for its 
explanation of terms used of the other world. 


109. In the world of spirits there are vast numbers, for there 
all meet at first, and are explored and prepared. ‘The time of 


194 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


their stay in that world is not fixed; some only enter it, and soon 
are either taken into heaven or cast down into hell. Some remain 
only a few weeks, some several years, but not more than thirty. 
These differences in the time they remain depend on the corre- 
spondence or lack of correspondence of a man’s exteriors with his 


interiors. H.426, 


110. There are three states through which a human being 
passes after death, before he enters either heaven or hell. ‘he first 
state is that of his outward nature and life; the second, that of his 
inward nature and life; and the third, one of preparation. A man 
passes through these states in the world of spirits. 

The first state of a man ifter death is like his state in the 
world, for he is then similarly in things outward. His appearance 
is similar, and so are his speech, his mental habit, and his moral and 
civil life. As a result he does not know but that he is still in the 
world, unless he pays attention to things that meet his eye, and to 
what the angels told him at his resuscitation, that now he is a 
spirit. In this way one life is carried on into the other, and death 
is only the transition. H.491, 493. 

When the first state is past, which is that of the outward 
nature and life, a spirit is admitted into the state of his inward 
will and thought, in which, when he was left to himself to think 
freely and unchecked, he had been in the world. Into this state 
he slips unawares, as he did in the world. When in this state, he 
is in himself, and in his very life. For to think freely from the 
affection properly one’s own is the very life of man, and is the man. 

When a spirit is in the state of his inward nature and life, it 
appears plainly what manner of man he had been in the world; 
for he acts then from his very self. A man who was inwardly in 
good in the world, then acts rationally and wisely—more wisely, 
in fact, than he did in the world; for he has been loosed from 
connection with the body, and so with worldly things, which 
caused obscurity, and, as it were, interposed a cloud. But a man 
who was in evil in the world, then acts foolishly and insanely— 
more insanely, too, than he did in the world, for now he is in 
freedom and not coerced. For when he lived in the world he 
was sane in his outward life, for so he gave the appearance of a 
rational man. When, therefore, his outward life is laid off, his 
insanities show themselves. H.502, 505. 

The third state of a human being after death, i.e., of his spirit, 
is a state of instruction. ‘This state is for those who enter heaven 
and become angels. ... For one can be prepared for heaven 


STANDARD PASSAGES 195 


only by means of knowledges of good and truth, i.e., only by means 
of instruction, since one can know what spiritual good and truth 
are, and what evil and falsity, their opposites are, only by being 
taught. . . . Instruction is given by angels of many societies, 
especially those in the northern and southern quarters, because those 
angelic societies are in intelligence and wisdcm from a knowledge 
of good and truth. . . . All teaching there is from doctrine 
drawn from the Word, and not from the Word apart! from 
doctrine. . . . Instruction in the heavens differs from instruction 
on earth in that knowledge is not committed to memory, but to 
life. For the memory of spirits is in their life, as they receive and 
imbibe everything that is in harmony with their life, and do not 
receive, still less imbibe, what is not in harmony. H.512 et seqq. 


*J.e., apart from some systematizing of what the Word says. Cf. n.187. 


111. A man’s life cannot * be changed after death, but remains 
such as it had been. For a man’s spirit in its entirety is such as 
his love is; and infernal love cannot be transmuted into heavenly, 
as they are opposite. This is meant by Abraham’s words to the 
rich man in hell: “There is a great gulf between you and us, so 
that they who wish to pass to you cannot, neither can they pass 
from thence to us’ (Luke xvi.26) ; from which it is plain that they 
who come into hell remain there forever,” and that they who come 
into heaven remain there forever, N.239. 


1 Theoretically it can, but the teaching reports the result of observation. 
See the following excerpt. 

?On the problem in Providence this presents see the Outline & 106. 
Can the indefinite persistence of perversion be put on a par with the 
eternity of good or of God? 


112. After death there is granted to every man ample means 
of amending his life, if that be possible. All are taught and led by 
the Lord by means of angels; and as they are then conscious that 
they are living after death, and that there is a heaven and a hell, 
at first they are receptive of truths. But those who did not 
acknowledge God while they lived in the world and did not shun 
evils as sins soon weary of truths and withdraw; while those who 
acknowledged truths with the lips but not the heart are like the 
foolish virgins who had lamps but no oil, and who begged oil of 
others, and who went away and bought, and yet were not ad- 
mitted to the wedding; from which it can be seen that the Divine 
Providence makes it possible for every one to be saved, and that 
man alone is responsible if he is not saved. P.328. 


196 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


113. Every one’s love constitutes his proper self after death. 


H .479. 


114. Every human being has two memories! which are alto- 
gether distinct from each other—one exterior, which is proper to 
a man during his abode in the world, and the other interior, 
which belongs to him as a spiritual being, and is far more excellent 
than the exterior. 

Whatever things a man hears, sees and is affected by, are, as to 
ideas and end, insinuated into his interior memory without his 
being aware of it; and there they remain so that not a single im- 
pression is lost, although the same things are obliterated in the 
exterior memory. ‘Ihe interior memory is such, therefore, that 
there are inscribed on it all the particular things, indeed the most 
particular which a man has at any time thought, spoken and done, 
yes, which have appeared to him in shadow, with the most minute 
circumstances, from his earliest infancy to extreme old age. “The 
human being has the memory of all these things with him when 
he comes into the other life, and is successively brought into recol- 
lection of them. This is his book of life which is opened after 
death and according to which he is judged. 

Man can hardly believe this, and yet it is most true. All the 
ends of his life which were to him hidden in obscurity, all that he 
had thought, spoken and done, as derived from those ends, are re- 
corded, even to the most minute circumstance, in that Book, Le., 
in the interior memory, and are made manifest before the angels, 
in a light as clear as day, whenever the Lord sees best to permit it. 
This has been shewn me at times, and evidenced by so much ex- 
perience and an experience so varied, that there remains not the 


smallest doubt about it. A.2474. 


1The memories are structures; the power of recollection is not meant. 
Relate the idea of two memories with what was said of the constitution 
of the human being, nn.11, 12. 


115. It is an abiding truth that every man rises again after 
death into another life, and presents himself for judgment. “This 
judgment, however, is circumstanced as follows: As soon as his 
bodily parts grow cold, which takes place after a few days, he is 
raised by the Lord at the hands of celestial angels who first are 
with him. If he is such that he cannot be with them, he is re- 
ceived by spiritual angels, and in turn afterwards by good spirits. 
For all who come into the other life, whoever they may be, are 
grateful and welcome new-comers. But as every one’s desires 
follow him, he who has led a bad life cannot remain long with 


STANDARD PASSAGES 197 


angels and good spirits, but separates himself in turn from them, 
until at length he comes to spirits of a life conforming to the life 
he had led in the world. It seems to him then as though he were 
back in the life of the body; his present life being, in fact, a con- 
tinuation of his past life. With this life his judgment commences. 
‘They who have led a bad life in process of time descend into hell; 
they who have led a good life, are by degrees raised by the Lord 
into heaven. A.2119. 


116. It is not known in the world that before the evil are 
condemned and let down into hell they pass through many states. 
Instead it is believed that a man is either condemned or saved 
immediately, and that this is done without any definite procedure. 
But justice reigns there, and no one is condemned until he him- 
self realizes by an inner conviction that he is in evil and that it is 
impossible for him to be in heaven. His evils are made clear to 
him, too, according to the Lord’s words in Luke: “There is nothing 
covered up that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be 
known. ‘Therefore whatsoever ye have said in the darkness shall 
be heard in the light; and what ye have spoken in the ear in the 
inner chamber shall be proclaimed upon the housetops’ (xii.2, 3). 


aero): 


117. Hell consists of spirits who when they were men in the 
world denied God, acknowledged nature,’ lived against Divine 
order, and loved evils and falsities, although for the appearance’s 
sake this was not done openly; and this being so they were either 
insane with regard to truths, or despised them, or denied them, 
in heart if not with the lips. Hell consists of all such who have 
lived since the creation of the world. They are all called either 
devils or satans; those in whom love of self has predominated are 
called devils, and those in whom love of the world has predom- 
inated satans. E.1142. 


* Took nature for god, or at least as the sum total of reality. 


118. Self love and love of the world rule in the hells and also 
constitute them. Love to the Lord and for the neighbor rule in 
the heavens and constitute them. ‘These loves are diametrically 
opposed. Self love consists in wishing well to oneself alone, and 
not to others except for the sake of oneself, not even to the Church, 
to one’s country, or to any human society; also in doing good to 
them, but for one’s reputation’s sake, honor and glory. Unless he 
sees these in the services he renders others, he says in his heart, 
‘Of what use is it? Why should I do it? Of what advantage will 


198 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


it be to me?’ and he leaves it undone. His delight is only that of 
self-love. And because the delight which springs from a man’s 
love makes his life, therefore his life is the life of self; and the 
life of self is life from man’s proprium; and the proprium, viewed 
in itself,! is nothing but evil. Love of self is also of such a 
quality that as far as the reins are given it it rushes on until at 
length it desires to rule not only over the whole earth, but over 
the whole heaven, too, and over the Divine Himself, knowing no 


limit or end. H.554, 556, 559, 
*See n.70. note 3. 


119. The universe was a continuous work from its Creator 
even to outmost things, and being a work continuous from Him 
it depends on Him, Who is its common center, and is moved and 
governed by Him as a continuous, single chain. “The question 
arose, ‘Whence then is hell?’ It was said, ‘From the human being’s 
freedom, without which he would not be a human being. By that 
freedom the human being severed that continuity in himself, and 
with this severance a separation took place, and the continuity 
which was in man from the beginning became like a chain or 
linked arrangement which fails when the upper links are shattered 
or torn apart and thenceforward hung by slender threads. ‘This 
alienation was and is effectéd by the denial of God. D.W.e. 


120. Evil spirits are punished because the fear of punishment is 
the only means of subduing their evils. Exhortation is of no avail, 
nor instruction, nor the fear of the law, nor loss of reputation, 
because they act now according to their own essential nature. 


N.509. 


121. Evil spirits in this second state bring frequent and griev- 
ous punishment on themselves by plunging into evils of every kind. 
Every evil brings with it its own punishment, and therefore he who 
is in evil suffers the punishment appropriate to it. No one, how- 
ever, suffers punishment for any evil which he has done in the 
world, but for the evil which he continues to do there. Yet it 
comes to the same thing, for after death every one returns to his 
own life and consequently to corresponding evils. H.509. 


122. The torments of hell are not the stings of conscience, as 
some suppose. ‘Those in hell have no conscience, and therefore 
cannot be tormented in that way. “Those who have conscience are 


among the blessed. A.965. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 199 


123. After death one’s life follows him, and he remains in the 
state which he had acquired by the whole course of his life in the 
world. ‘Then one in evil is no longer capable of being reformed ; 
and lest he should have communication with any society of heaven, 
all truth and good are taken from him, so that he remains in evil 
and falsity, which grow there up to the capacity to receive them 
which he has acquired in the world. But he is not allowed to 
pass beyond the acquired bounds. . . . After enduring punish- 
ments many times, he at last abstains from evil, not out of free- 
dom, but by compulsion, the cupidity of doing evil remaining. 
This cupidity is kept in check, as has been said, by fears, which are 
external and compulsory means of amendment. ‘This is the state 


of the evil in the other life. A.6977, 


124. It is a law in the other life that no one shall become 
worse than he had been in the world. A.6559, 


125. Heaven is in a human being, and those who have heaven 
in them come into heaven. Heaven in one is to acknowledge the 
Divine, and to be led by the Divine. . . . The heaven around 
one every angel receives according to the heaven which is in him. 
Unless heaven is within one, none of the heaven around flows in 
and is received. 

Love to the Lord is the love regnant in the heavens, for there 
the Lord is loved above all things. The Lord is all in all there. 
He flows into all angels, and into each of them. He disposes them; 
He induces a likeness of Himself on them, and causes heaven to 
be where He is. Hence an angel is heaven in a least form; a 
society heaven in a larger form; and all the societies together are 


heaven in the largest form. H.319, 54, 58. 


126. The angels taken collectively are called heaven, because 
they constitute heaven. Still it is the Divine proceeding! from 
the Lord which flows in with the angels and is received by them 
that makes heaven in general and in particular. “The Divine 
proceeding from the Lord is the good of love” and the truth of 
faith.2 So far, therefore, as they receive good and truth from the 
Lord, they are angels and are heaven. 

Every one in heaven knows and believes, yes, perceives that he 
wills and does nothing of good from himself, and that he thinks 
and believes nothing of truth from himself, but from the Divine, 
that is, from the Lord. . . . Since these things all proceed from 
the Lord, and the angels have heaven in them, it is evident that the 
Divine of the Lord makes heaven, and not the angels by virtue of 
anything of theirs. Hence it is that heaven in the Word is called 


200 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


the Lord’s habitation and His throne; and that the dwellers in it 
are said to be in the Lord. H.7, 8. 


1‘Divine’ is the noun; ‘proceeding’ the adjective. 
? Give these terms the meaning we have learned to give them, and note 
the idea which results of the Divine of the Lord. 


127. Heaven consists of two kingdoms, the celestial and the 
spiritual. The celestial kingdom is the inmost or third heaven, 
and the spiritual kingdom is the middle or second. ‘The good in 
which the celestial are principled is called celestial good, and that 
in which the spiritual are principled is called spiritual good. 
Celestial good is the good of love to the Lord, and spiritual good 
is the good of love to the neighbor. ‘The union of these two king- 
doms is effected by the good of charity to the neighbor. For the 
internal principle of those who are in the celestial kingdom is love 
to the Lord, and their external principle is charity to the neighbor, 
while of those in the spiritual kingdom the internal principle is 
charity to the neighbor, and their external principle faith thence 
derived. Hence it appears that the union of the two kingdoms is 
effected by charity to the neighbor. In that the celestial kingdom 
closes and from it the spiritual kingdom commences. Thus the 
ultimate principle of the one is the first of the other, and thus 
they take hold on each other mutually. A.5922(2). There are 
three heavens entirely distinct from each other, an inmost or 
third, a middle or second, and an outmost or first. H.29. “Those 
in the lowest! heaven are either spiritual natural or celestial 
natural. ‘The spiritual natural there belong to the spiritual king- 
dom of the Lord, the celestial natural to the celestial kingdom. 
The spiritual natural communicate, therefore, with the second 
heaven, and the celestial with the third heaven. E.449. 

*In referring to the heavens in this way Swedenborg counts up from 
the world of spirits. 

128. As there are infinite varieties in heaven, and no one com- 
pany nor any one angel is exactly like another, there are in heaven 
general, specific and particular divisions. “The general division is 
into two kingdoms, the specific into three heavens, and the par- 
ticular into innumerable societies. H.20. 


129. “Those who are in genuine love to the Lord, so as to have 
a perception of that love, are in a higher degree of good and truth, 
and are in the inmost or third heaven, thus are nearest to the Lord, 
and are called celestial angels. “Those who are in charity toward 
the neighbor, so as to have a perception of charity, and not so 
much a perception of love to the Lord, are in a lower degree of 


STANDARD PASSAGES 201 


good and truth, and are in the inner or second heaven, and thus 
more remote from the Lord, and are called spiritual angels. But 
those who are in charity to the neighbor merely from an affection 
of truth, so as not to have any perception of charity itself toward 
the neighbor, except from the truth with which they are impressed, 
are in a still lower degree of good and truth, and in the outer or 
first heaven, and thus still more remote from the Lord, and are 


called good spirits. A.3691. 


130. The immensity of the Lord’s heaven is evident from many 
things, . . . especially from this, that heaven is from the human 
race, both from those born within the church and from those 
born without it;! thus it consists of all from the beginning of this 
earth who have lived a good life. . . . The immensity of the 
heaven of the Lord is also shown by this that all children, whether 
born within the church or outside it, are adopted by the Lord and 
become angels; and the number of these amounts to a fourth or 
fifth part of the whole human race on the earth. . . . Again, 
how immense the heaven of the Lord is can be seen from this that 
all the planets visible to the eye in our solar system are earths, 
and moreover that in the whole universe there are innumerable 
earths, all of them full of inhabitants. . . . Again, the im- 
mensity of heaven is shown in this, that heaven in its entire com- 
plex reflects a single human being, and corresponds to all things 
and each in a man, and that this correspondence can never be filled 
out, since it is a correspondence not only with each of the members, 
organs and viscera of the body in general, but also with each and 
all of the little viscera and little organs contained in these in every 
minutest particular, and even with each vessel and fiber; and not 
only with these but also with the organic substances that receive 
interiorly the influx of heaven, from which come man’s interior 
activities that are serviceable to the operations of his mind. For 
everything which exists interiorly in a human being exists in 
forms which are substance,? for a thing that does not exist in a 
substance for its subject is nothing. . . . I have also been per- 
mitted to see the extent of the inhabited and also of the unin- 
habited* heaven; and the extent of the uninhabited heaven was 
seen to be so great that it could not be filled to eternity, even if 
there were many myriads of earths, and as great a multitude of 
men on each earth as on ours. H.415 et seqq. 

* The teaching of the New Church has always thought that non-Chris- 
tians are saved who live up to their lights. H.318. 


* Cf. § 6. Outline. 
®'What can this mean? See § 57e. 


202 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


131. It is worthy of mention—something wholly unknown in 
the world—that the states of good spirits and of angels are con- 
tinually changing and perfecting, and that they are thereby raised 
up into the interiors of the province in which they are, and so into 
nobler functions. For there is in heaven a continual purification 
and, so to speak, a new creation. Yet the case is such that not to 
eternity can any angel arrive at absolute perfection. “The Lord 
alone is perfect. In and from Him is all perfection. A.4803. 


132. The people of heaven are continually advancing toward 
the springtime of life; and the more thousands of years they live, 
the more delightful and happy is the spring to which they attain. 
Women who have died old and worn out with age, and have lived 
in faith in the Lord and in charity to the neighbor, come, with the 
course of years, more-and more into the flower of youth and early 
womanhood, and into a beauty exceeding every idea of beauty ever 
formed through sight. In a word, to grow old in heaven is to 
grow young. H.414 


133. Many suppose that children remain children in the other 
life, and that they are as children among the angels. ‘The fact, 
however, is quite otherwise. Intelligence and wisdom make an 
angel, and these, as long as they are infants, children do not have. 
It is when they have become intelligent and wise that they become 
angels, and then they appear not as children but as adults; for they 
are no more of a childlike genius, but of an adult angelic genius. 
Intelligence and wisdom carry this with them. For understanding 
and judgment and life according thereto are what cause one to 
appear as an adult to himself and to others, as any one can see. 


H..340. 


134. The angelic life consists in uses, and in doing good works 
of charity. Nothing is more delightful to the angels than to in- 
struct and teach spirits, at their first coming into the spiritual 
world; also, to serve mankind by inspiring it with what is good, 
and by restraining the evil spirits attendant on it from passing 
their proper bounds. It is likewise the happiness of angels to raise 
up the dead to the life of eternity, and afterwards, if it be possible, 
and there be a capacity in the soul, to introduce it into heaven. 
From these offices they receive a delight which cannot be described. 
Thus they are images of the Lord, thus they love their neighbor 
more than themselves, and thus heaven is heaven to them. A.454. 


135. There is an unceasing influx out of the spiritual world 
into the natural world. One who does not know that there is a 


STANDARD PASSAGES 203 


spiritual world, or that it is distinct from the natural, as what is 
prior is distinct from what is subsequent, or as cause is from the 
thing caused, can have no knowledge of this influx. For this rea- 
son men who have written on the origin of plants and animals 
could only ascribe that origin to nature, or, if to God, then in the 
sense that God implanted in nature from the beginning a power to 
produce things—not knowing that no power has been implanted in 
nature, since nature, in herself, is dead, and contributes no more 
to the production of these things than, for instance, a tool does to 
the work of a mechanic, the tool acting only as it is continually 
moved. It is the spiritual, deriving its origin from the sun where 
the Lord is, and proceeding to the outmosts of nature, that pro- 
duces the forms of plants and animals, exhibiting the marvels that 
exist in both, and filling the forms with matters from the earth, 
that they may become fixed and enduring. But as it is now known 
that there is a spiritual world, and that the spiritual is from the 
spiritual sun, in which the Lord is and which is from the Lord, 
and that the spiritual is what impels nature to act, as what is 
living impels what is dead, also that like things exist in the spiritual 
world as in the natural, it can now be seen that plants and animals 
have had their existence only from the Lord through that world, 
and through that world they have perpetual existence. Thus there 
is unceasing influx from the spiritual world into the natural. 

Noxious things are produced on earth through influx from hell, by 
the same law of permissions whereby the evils themselves from hell 


flow in with men. W,340. 


136. ‘The mind of a man is his spirit which lives after death. 
A man’s spirit is constantly in company with spirits like himself 
in the spiritual world. Man does not know that in respect to his 
mind he is in the midst of spirits, because the spirits with whom 
he is in company in that world, think and speak spiritually. The 
spirit of man, however, while in the material body, thinks and 
speaks naturally; and spiritual thought and speech cannot be 
understood, nor perceived, by the natural human being; nor the 
reverse. Hence, too, it is that spirits cannot be seen. Yet when a 
man’s spirit is in society with spirits in their world, then he is in 
spiritual thought and speech with them, too, because his inner 
mind is spiritual, but the outer natural. Wherefore by his inner 
nature he communicates with them, and by his outer being with 
men. By this communication a man perceives and thinks analyt- 
ically. If there were no such communication, the human being 
would no more think than a beast, nor any differently from a 


204 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


beast. Indeed, were all commerce with spirits cut off, a man 


would die instantly. T’.475. 


137. Many believe that the human being can be taught by the 
Lord through spirits who speak with him. “They who believe so, 
and attempt this communication, do not know, however, that it is 
attended with danger to their souls. While a man is living in the 
world, he is in the midst of spirits as to his spirit. Spirits do not 
know they are wtih the man, however, nor does he know that he 
is with spirits. But as soon as spirits begin to speak with a man, 
they come out of their spiritual state into the man’s natural state. 
Then they know they are with man, and they unite themselves to 
the thoughts of his affection, and they speak with him from those 
thoughts. Thence it is that the spirit speaking is in the same 
things as the man, whether these things be true or false. “These he 
stirs up, and through his affection, united to the man’s, strongly 
confirms them. Al] this shows the danger in which a man is who 
speaks with spirits, or who manifestly perceives their operation. 
Of the nature of this affection, good or bad, a man is ignorant, 
also with what others he is associated. If his is a pride of self- 
intelligence, the spirit favors every thought from that source. 
Likewise there is the favoring of principles which are inflamed 
with the fire which those have who are not in truths from any 
genuine affection for them. Whenever from a like affection a 
spirit favors a man’s thoughts or principles, then the former leads 
the latter, as the blind lead the blind, until both fall into the 
ditch. 

It is otherwise with those whom the Lord leads. He leads those 
who love and will truths from Him. Such are enlightened when 
they read the Word, for there the Lord is, and He speaks with 
every one according to the latter’s. apprehension. When these hear 
speech from spirits, as sometimes they do, they are not taught, but 
are led, and this so prudently that the man is still left to himself. 
For every man is led through affections by the Lord, and he thinks 
from these freely as if of himself. Were it otherwise, a man could 


not be reformed, nor could be be enlightened. E.1182, 1183. 


138. It is believed in the world that from the light of nature, 
thus without revelation, one can know the several things which 
relate to religion, as that there is a God, that He is to be wor- 
shipped, and also that He is to be loved, likewise that the human 
being will live after death, and several other things which depend 
on these; and yet they are things derived from self-intelligence. 
But I have been instructed by much experience that of himself 


STANDARD PASSAGES 205 


the human being knows nothing at all about Divine things, and 
about things that have to do with celestial and spiritual life, with- 
out revelation. For man is born into the evils of the love of self 
and of the world, which are such as to preclude influx from 
heaven, and to open influx from hell, thus such as to blind a man 
and incline him to deny the existence of the Divine, of heaven and 


hell, and of a life after death. A.8944. 


139. Since, therefore, the human being lives after death, and 
even to eternity; and since a life awaits him in accord with his 
love and faith; it follows that the Divine being, out of love for 
the human race, has revealed such things as may lead to that life 
and conduce to man’s salvation. What He has revealed, is the 


Word with us. N.251. 
140. The Word has existed at all times, but not the Word 


which we have to-day. “There was another Word in the most 
ancient church which was before the flood; another in the ancient 
church which was after the flood; then in the Jewish Church the 
Word written by Moses and the prophets; and finally, in the new 
church, the Word written by the evangelists. A Word has existed 
at all times because the communication of heaven with earth is by 
the Word, and because the Word deals with good and truth, 
by which the human being may live happy to eternity, and there- 
fore in the internal sense it treats of the Lord alone, inasmuch as 


all good and truth are from Him. A.2895, 


141. The Word in the most ancient church, which was before 
the flood, was not a written Word, but was revealed to every one 
of the Church. For they were celestial men, consequently in the 
perception of good and truth as the angels are, with whom they 
also had companionship. Thus they had the Word inscribed on 
their hearts. And as they were celestial and had companionship 
with angels, whatever they saw and were sensible of was to them 
representative of things celestial and spiritual, which are in the 
Lord’s kingdom. “They saw worldly things and terrestrial, of 
course, with the eyes, or grasped them through some other sense, 
but from and by them they thought of things celestial and spiritual. 
Only in this way! were they able to discourse with angels, for 
things heavenly and spiritual which pertain to the angels, coming 
to the human being fall into such things as concern man in the 
world. ‘That all things in the world represent and signify things 
which are in the heavens, has been shown heretofore from the first 
chapter of Genesis to the present chapter. Hence came repre- 


206 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


sentatives and significatives, which, when communication with the 
angels began to cease, were collected by those meant by Enoch, as 
was signified by these words, Genesis v.24, “Enoch walked with 
God, and he was not, for God took him.” A.2896, 


* Cf. “Coronis” 52; they did not transcend their this-world consciousness. 


142. The Word in the ancient church, which was after the 
flood, was derived (from the work of those meant by Enoch). 
The men of this church, being spiritual, not celestial men, knew, 
but did not perceive + what was involved in representatives 2 and 
significatives.* As these involved Divine things, they were put to 
use, especially in Divine worship, and this with the intent that they 
might have communication with heaven (for, as was observed, all 
things that exist in the world represent and signify things in 
heaven). ‘They also had a written Word,*® which consisted of the 
historical, and the prophetic, like the Word of the Old Testament, 
but that Word was lost * in process of time. The historical portion 
was called “The Wars of Jehovah,’ and the prophetic ‘Enuncia- 
tions,’ as appears from Moses, Numbers xxi.14, 27, where they 
are cited. “Che historical portion was written in the prophetic 
style, and for the most part was “made-up history” like Genesis 
from chapter i to xi, as is plain from what is quoted thence in 
Moses; where are these words: ‘““Therefore it is said in the Book 
of the Wars of Jehovah, Vaheb in Supha, and the rivers of Arnon, 
and the course of the rivers, which inclined to the dwelling of 
Ar, and leans on the border of Moab” (Numbers xxi.14, 15). 
The prophetic portion was composed like the prophetic part of the 
Old Testament, as is plain, too, from what is quoted thence by 
Moses, where are these words: “Therefore say the Enunciations 
(or the prophetic enunciators), Come to Heshbon! ‘The city of 
Sihon shall be built and strengthened, because a fire has gone 
forth from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon, it has devoured 
Ar of Moab, the lords of the high places of Arnon. Woe to you, 
Moab! You are lost, O people of Chemosh! He has given his sons 
that escaped, and his daughters into captivity to Sihon king of the 
Amorite. And we have shot at them, Heshbon has perished even 
to Dibon, and we have laid waste even to Nopha, which is to 
Medeba” (Numbers xxi.27-30). That this prophetic portion 
involves heavenly arcana, like that of the Old Testament, is very 
manifest, not only from the consideration that these things were 
transcribed by Moses, and that they applied to the state of things 
then treated of, but from this, too, that one reads nearly the same 
words in Jeremiah, inserted in the prophecies of that book, in which 


STANDARD PASSAGES 207 


it must be very plain from what has been said concerning the 
internal sense of the Word, there are contained as many heavenly 
arcana as there are words. ‘The passage is this: “A fire went 
forth from Heshbon, and a flame from between Sihon, and de- 
voured the corner of Moab, and the crown of the heads of the 
sons of tumult. Woe to you, Moab! the people of Chemosh 
perish, because your sons are taken into captivity, and your daugh- 
ters” (xlviii.45, 46). Hence it is evident that that Word also had 
an internal sense. A.2897. 

That they had a prophetic Word, which in the internal sense 
treated of the Lord, and of His kingdom, may appear not only 
from the considerations above, but also from the prophetic utter- 
ances of Balaam, who was of Syria, of which in Moses, Numbers 
xxiii. 7, 8,9, 10, and 18 to 25; xxiv.3-10, and 15-25. These are 
delivered in a style similar to the other prophetic parts of the 
Word, and manifestly predict the Lord’s coming in these words: 
“IT see Him, and not now, I behold Him, and not nigh; a star 
shall come forth from Jacob, and a scepter shall arise out of 
Israel, and shall break the corners of Moab, and shall destroy all 
the sons of Sheth” (xxiv.17). These prophetic utterances are 
also called Enunciations, for the expression is the same (xxili.7, 


18; xxiv.3, 15, 20)... A.2898. 


1'The things known remained the same; it was the manner of appre- 
hension which changed. 

?On these terms see Excerpt n.165, note. 

>What was first mentioned was oral tradition. 

“On the Ancient Word see S.102, 103, R.11. 


143. A Word succeeded later in the Jewish Church. It was 
written in like manner by representatives and significatives, to the 
intent that it might contain an internal sense understood in heaven, 
and that thus there might be communication by the Word, and the 
Lord’s kingdom in the heavens be united with His kingdom on 
earth. Unless all things in the Word were representative, and 
unless all expressions used were significative of Divine things hav- 
ing to do with the Lord, the Word would not be Divine. As this 
is so, it could not possibly be written in any other style, for by this 
style, and no other, human things and expressions correspond with 
heavenly things and ideas, as to the smallest jot and tittle. It 
follows that if the Word be read even by a child, the Divine things 
in it are perceived by the angels. A.2899, 


144. In regard to the Word of the New ‘Testament, which is 
in the Evangelists, inasmuch as the Lord spoke from the essential 


208 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Divine, therefore also each and all things He said were repre- 
sentative and significative of the heavenly things of His kingdom 
and church. A.2900. 


145. That all things that are real have come into existence and 
do come into existence through the Divine truth which is from 
the Lord, and thus through the Word, is a secret that has not yet 
been disclosed. It is believed that by this is meant that all things 
have been created by God’s saying and commanding as a king in 
his kingdom. It is not this however that is meant by all things 
having been made and created through the Word, but it is the 
Divine truth? that proceeds from Divine good, i.e., from the 
Lord, from which all things have come into existence and do come 
into existence. The Divine truth proceeding from the Divine good 
is the veriest reality and the veriest essential in. the universe, and 
it is this that makes and creates. Scarcely anyone has any other 
idea of the Divine truth than as of a word which issues from the 
mouth of a speaker and is dispersed in the air. “This idea of the 
Divine truth has produced the opinion that by the ‘Word’ is meant 
only 2 command, thus that all things were made merely by com- 
mand, and thus not from any real thing which has proceeded from 
the Divine of the Lord. As already said, however, the Divine 
truth proceeding from the Lord, is the veriest reality and essential, 
from which are all things, and the forms of good and truth. 


AxS27 212): 


+The teaching speaks of the Divine as it is in itself as Divine Good, 
and of the Divine as it goes forth as‘Divine Truth. 


146. All goods and truths that are in the heavens are from 
Divine truth which proceeds from the Lord’s Divine good. As 
received by the angels in the Lord’s celestial kingdom this Divine 
good is called ‘celestial good;’ but in the spiritual kingdom, as 
received by angels there, it is called ‘spiritual good.’ For howso- 
ever Divine truth proceeding from the Lord’s Divine good is called 
truth, it is nevertheless good.’ It is called truth because it appears 
in the heavens, and before the external sight of the angels there, 
as light; for light there is Divine truth. But the heat in this light, 
which is the good of love, makes it to be good. “The case is similar 
with man. When truth of faith proceeds from good of charity (as 
it does when a man has been regenerated), it then appears as good, 
which is called ‘spiritual good,’ as a result; for the being of truth 
is good, and truth is the form of good. From this it can be seen 
why one finds it so difficult to distinguish between thinking and 


STANDARD PASSAGES 209 


willing. Yet they are distinct, like truth and good. . . . More- 
over all the good with a man is formed by means of truth; for 
good flows in by an internal way from the Lord, and truth enters 
by an external way; and they enter into a marriage in the internal 
man. . . . Ihe external way by which truth enters is through 
hearing and sight into understanding. ‘The internal way by which 
good enters from the Lord is through the inmost nature into the 


els Wee ey 


*See note to preceding excerpt; in the Divine which goes forth there 
are both good and truth, though it is called Divine truth. 


147. In brief the Word is Divine truth itself, which gives 
wisdom to angels and enlightens men. E. 1066. 


148. Inasmuch as Divine truth, which is the Word, in its 
descent into the world from the Lord, has passed through the three 
heavens, it has become accommodated to each heaven, and lastly 
to men in the world also. As a result there are four senses in 
the Word, one outside of the other from the highest heaven down 
to the world, or one within the other from the world up to the 
highest heaven. “These four senses are called the celestial, spiritual, 
natural from the celestial and spiritual, and the merely natural. 
This last is for the world, the next for the lowest heaven, the 
spiritual for the second heaven, and the celestial for the third. 
‘These four senses differ so greatly from one another that when one 
is exhibited beside the other no connection can be recognized. Yet 
they make one when one follows the other. For one follows the 
other as effect from cause, or what is subsequent from what pre- 
cedes; consequently as an effect represents its cause, and corre- 
sponds to its cause, so a subsequent sense corresponds to a preced- 
ing; and thus it is that through correspondence all the senses make 


one. E.1066. 


149. ‘Truth Divine is not of one degree but of many. In the 
first degree, and in the second also, Divine truth is what proceeds 
immediately from the Lord; this is above angelic understanding. 
But truth Divine in the third degree is such as is in the inmost 
heaven; this is such that it cannot be apprehended in the least by 
man. ‘Truth Divine in the fourth degree is such as is in the 
middle or second heaven; neither is this intelligible to the human 
being. But truth Divine in the fifth degree is such as is in the 
lowest or first heaven; this can be perceived in some small measure 
by man provided he is enlightened. Still it is such that a great 
part of it cannot be expressed by human words, and when it falls 


210 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


into the ideas, it produces the faculty of perceiving and believing 
that the case is so. But truth Divine in the sixth degree is such 
as is with man, accommodated to his perception; thus it is the sense 


of the letter of the Word. A.8443. 


150. In its inmosts the Sacred Scripture is no other than God, 
i.e., the Divine which proceeds from God. . . . In its derivatives 
this is accommodated to the perception of angels and men. In 
these it is Divine likewise, but in another form, in which. this 
Divine is called “celestial,” “spiritual” and “natural.” ‘These are 
no other than coverings of God. Still the Divine, which is inmost, 
and is covered with such things as are accommodated to the per- 
ception of angels and men, shines forth, like light through crystal- 
line forms, but variously, according to the state of mind which a 
man has formed for himself, either from God or from self. 
In the sight of a man who has formed the state of his mind from 
God, the Sacred Scripture is like a mirror in which he sees God— 
each in his own way. ‘Truths which he learns from the Word, and 
which become a part of him by a life according to them compose 
that mirror. The Sacred Scripture is the fulness of God. T.6. 


151. The Word is the Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, 
which in its origin is Divine, and in its progress through the 
heavens, in the inmost heaven is celestial, in the second or middle 
is spiritual, in the first or lowest is spiritual natural, and in the 
world is natural and worldly, such as it is in the sense of the letter 
which is for man. Hence it is evident that this latter sense, which 
is the last in order, contains in it the spiritual and celestial senses, 


and inmostly the Divine itself. A.9407. 


Research reference, 8920. 


152. There is in the Word a spiritual sense hitherto unknown. 
Who does not acknowledge and assent when it is asserted that, as 
the Word is Divine, it must be spiritual in its bosom? Still who 
as yet has known what this spiritual is, and where it is stored up 
in the Word? ‘The Word is spiritual in its bosom because it came 
down from Jehovah the Lord, and passed through the angelic 
heavens; and in its descent the Divine itself (in itself ineffable 
and imperceptible) became level with the perceptions of angels 
and finally with the perception of men. Hence the Word has a 
spiritual sense, which is within the natural as the soul is in man, 
or as the thought of the understanding is in speech, or an affection 


of the will in action. T.193. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 211 


153. It is the same with every particular of the Word in its 
sense of the letter. Inasmuch as this is its outmost sense, it is 
natural, and is adapted to the comprehension of the sensuous man, 
thus of children and the simple. Most things in it, therefore, are 
appearances of truth, and unless these are seen from a spiritual, 
i.e., from an enlightened understanding, they become falsities; for 
in that case they are taken to be actually true, and not true merely 
in appearance. It is otherwise when- they are perceived understand- 
ingly and spiritually; then all things of the Word become true, 
and in the sense of the letter true to appearance. 

It can be seen from this how innumerable things in the Word 
become falsified + and adulterated 1—as that God tempts, that He 
is angry, that He does evil, and that He casts into hell; likewise, 
that at the last judgment the Lord is to come in the clouds of 
heaven,” that the sun and moon will then withdraw their light, 
and the stars fall from heaven; and that the earth and the universe 
will perish, and a new creation of all things take place; with other 
things that are truths of the sense of the letter of the Word, but 
which»become falsities if they are not perceived from an enlightened 
understanding. E.719. 


* These terms refer to the action on Scripture of a mistaken view of life, 
and of a perverted will, respectively. 

? One can appreciate that such language as this is figurative; the spirit- 
ual sense carries it farther and makes it symbolic. 

154. In talking with good spirits I have taken the occasion to 
remark that many things in the Word, and more than one would 
conceive, are spoken according to appearances, and according to the 
fallacies of the senses, as where it is said that Jehovah is filled with 
wrath, anger and fury against the wicked, that He rejoices to 
destroy them and blot them out, yes, that He slays them. But 
these modes of speaking were used to the intent that persuasions 
and evil lusts might not be broken but bent. For to speak other- 
wise than man conceives whose thoughts are derived from appear- 
ances, fallacies and persuasions would have been to sow seed in the 
water, and to say what would instantly be rejected. Nevertheless 
those forms of speech may serve as common vessels for containing 
things spiritual and celestial, for it can be insinuated by them that 
all things are from the Lord, afterwards, that the Lord tolerates, 
but all evil is from diabolical spirits, next, that the Lord provides 
and disposes that evils may be turned into goods, and finally, that 
nothing but good is from the Lord. ‘Thus the sense of the letter 
perishes as it ascends, and becomes spiritual, then celestial, and 


finally Divine. A.1874. 


212 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


155. The case in this respect is like that of a parent, who, in 
teaching his children, explains all things according to their genius 
and capacities, although he himself thinks from an interior or 
deeper ground. Otherwise it would be teaching what would not 
be learned, or like casting seed on a rock. It is the same with 
angels who in the other life instruct the simple in heart and who, 
notwithstanding their being in heavenly and spiritual wisdom, still 
do not raise themselves above the comprehension of those whom 
they teach, but speak simply with them, rising by degrees as the 
instruction proceeds. For if they were to speak from angelic 
wisdom, the simple would not comprehend them at all, and con- 
sequently they would not bé led to truths and goods of faith. It 
would be the same had the Lord not taught in the Word in a 
rational manner according to man’s comprehension. Still in its 
internal sense the Word is raised to the understanding of the 
angels, though in the highest elevation, in which it is presented to 
the angels, it is infinitely beneath what is Divine. A.2533. 


156. The doctrine of genuine’ truth can also be drawn in full 
from the literal sense of the Word. For the Word in this sense 
is like a person clothed, whose face and hands are bare. All that 
concerns man’s life, is bare; the rest is clothed. $.55. 


* As distinguished from truth put as it appeared to too low a moral 
standard, for instance. 


157. The Word is wonderful in this respect, that it is Divine 
as to every iota. For every single expression corresponds to some 
spiritual reality, which may be said to be stored up in it. “The case 
herein is this: each and all things in the natural world have a 
correspondence with things of the spiritual world; and the Word 
is so written that the expressions in it, in their series, involve a 
series of spiritual verities which appear only to the man who has 
acquainted himself with correspondences. In this lies the Divine 
in the Word, and from this the Word is spiritual, as it is called. 
A. 10633. 


158. ‘And behold a ladder set on the earth, and its head reach- 
ing to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and 
descending on it. And behold Jehovah standing above it.’ “The 
ladder set between earth and heaven, or between the lowest and 
the highest, signifies communication. In the original tongue the 
term ladder is derived from an expression which signifies a path 
or way, and a path wr way is predicated of truth. By a ladder, 
therefore, one extremity of which is set on the earth, while the 


STANDARD PASSAGES 213 


other reaches to heaven, is signified the communication of truth 
which is in the lowest place with truth which is in the highest, in- 
deed with inmost good and truth, such as are in heaven, and from 
which heaven itself is an ascent as it were from what is lowest, 
and afterward, when the order is inverted, a descent, and is the 
order of man’s regeneration. “The arcanum which lies concealed 
in the internal sense of these words is, that all goods and truths 
descend from the Lord, and ascend to Him, for the human being 
is so created that the Divine things of the Lord may descend 
through him even to the last things of nature, and from the last 
things of nature may ascend to Him, so that the human being 
might be a medium uniting the Divine with the world of nature, 
and uniting the world of nature with the Divine, that thus, 
through man, as through the uniting medium, the very ultimate 
of nature might live from the Divine, which would be the case ? 


had man lived according to Divine order, A.3699-3702. 


*'The Word is such a medium, meant to restore the order which has 
been disturbed. Also cf. John i.51. 


159. Let the ten Words . . . serve for illustration. The 
literal sense is that parents are to be honored, that murder is not 
to be committed, nor adultery, nor theft, nor the rest. The in- 
ternal sense, however, is that the Lord is to be worshipped, that 
no one is to be held in hatred, that truth is not to be falsified, and 
that one must not claim to himself what is the Lord’s. ‘This is the 
understanding of these four precepts of the Decalog in heaven, and 
of the rest, too, in like manner. For they know no other Father 
in the heavens but the Lord, therefore by the command that parents 
be honored they understand that the Lord is to be worshipped. 
Neither do they know what killing is in the heavens, for they live 
forever, but instead of killing they understand holding in hatred, 
and harming the spiritual life of any one. Neither do they know 
in the heavens what it is to commit adultery, and instead of that 
they understand what corresponds to it, namely, the falsification of 
truth. Instead of stealing they perceive taking anything from 
the Lord, and claiming it to themselves—like good and truth. 
Such is that Law, and also the whole Word in heaven, or in the 
internal sense. Indeed, it is still deeper, for most of what Is 
thought and said in the heavens does not fall into words of human 
speech, for in the heavens one has a spiritual world and not a 
natural. The things of the spiritual world transcend those of 
the natural, as things immaterial do those material. Yet as 
material things correspond to immaterial, the latter may be ex- 


214 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


pressed by the material, thus by natural speech, but not spiritual. 
For spiritual speech is not a speech of material words, but of 
spiritual, which are ideas modified into words in the spiritual at- 
mosphere, and are re-presented by variations of heavenly light, 
which light in itself is nothing but Divine intelligence and wisdom 
proceeding from the Lord. A.7089. 


160. The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual 
Wrorld, not only in genera:, but in detail. Whatever comes forth, 
therefore, in the natural world from the spiritual, is called corre- 
spondential. “The world of nature comes forth and subsists from 
the spiritual world as an effect does from its efficient cause. H.89, 


161. What is Divine presents itself in the world in what 
corresponds. “The Word is therefore written wholly in corre- 
spondences. “Therefore the Lord, too, speaking as He did from 
the Divine, spoke in correspondences. For what is Divine falls 
into such things in nature as correspond to Divine things, which 
then contain these, called celestial and spiritual, in their bosom. 


Dee Ale 


162. The natural man cannot be convinced that the Word is 
Divine truth itself, in which there is Divine wisdom, and Divine 
life. For such a man estimates it by its style, and does not per- 
ceive these contents in it. “he style of the Word, however, is the 
Divine style itself, with which no other style is comparable, how- 
ever sublime and excellent it may seem. ‘The style of the Word is 
such that there is holiness in every sentence and in every word, and 
in some places even in the letters, and thereby the Word unites 
man with the Lord and opens heaven. T,191. 


163. There are in general four different styles in the Word. 
The first is that of the Most Ancient Church. “Their way of 
expressing themselves was such that, when they mentioned earthly 
and worldly things, they thought of the spiritual and celestial 
things which were represented. Accordingly they not only ex- 
pressed themselves by means of representatives, but also reduced 
them to a certain historical series, as it were, that they might be 
more vivid, and this was in the highest degree delightful to them. 
These representatives are called by David “dark sayings of old” 
(Psalm \xxviii.2-4). The second style is the historical, in the 
books of Moses from the time of Abram on, and in Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel and Kings; in which historical events are quite as they 
are set forth! in the sense of the letter; but still each and all 


STANDARD PASSAGES Ae 


things contain things entirely different in the internal sense. The 
third is the prophetic which sprang from the style of the Most 
Ancient Church; but it is not continuous and, as it were, historical, 
like the most ancient, but is disconnected and scarcely at all in- 
telligible 7 except in the internal sense, in which are the pro- 
foundest arcana, which follow one another, connected in beautiful 
order, and having regard to the external and internal man, to 
many states of the Church, to heaven itself, and in inmost things 
to the Lord. ‘The fourth is that of the Psalms of David, which is 
intermediate between the prophetic style and common speech. 
There, under the person of David as king, in the internal sense 


the Lord is treated of. A.66. 


* This means not accurate relation but that actual events are set down. 
Cf. Excerpt n.164. 

The messages of the Prophets have become plain and stirring to Bible 
study in the last one hundred years. 


164. As regards the histories, they are all true historically, ex- 
cept those in the early chapters of Genesis, which are ‘composed 
histories. Though they are true historically, they still have an 
internal sense, and in that sense, like the prophecies, treat solely 
of the Lord. ‘They treat of heaven and the church, too, and of 
what belongs to them; but as these are from the Lord, through 
them they look to the Lord, and hence are the Word. ‘The historic 
events are all representative,t and every word by which they are 
described is significative: “That the historic events are representa- 
tive, is evident from what has been explained thus far about 
Abraham, and will be evident from what is to be explained, by 
the Divine mercy of the Lord, respecting Isaac, Jacob and his 
twelve sons; and in regard to Egypt, the sojourning of the people 
in the desert, their entrance into the land of Canaan, etc. ‘That 
every word by which they are described is significative, is also 
manifest from what has been shown, as that the names signify 
things—for example, Egypt outward knowledge, Asshur the reason, 
Ephraim the intellectual, Tyre inward knowledges, Zion the 
celestial church, Jerusalem the spiritual, etc. And the same has 
been shown of the words, as that king signifies truth, priest good, 
and that all others have their respective internal significance—as 
kingdom, city, house, nation, people, garden, vineyard, oliveyard, 
gold, silver, brass, iron, birds, beasts, bread, wine, oil, morning, 
day, light; and this constantly, in the historical books as well as 
in the prophetic, though they were written by various individuals, 
and at different times—a constancy that would not exist if the 
Word had not come down from heaven. From this it may be 


216 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


known that there is an internal sense in the Word; and also from 
this, that the Divine Word cannot treat of mere men, like 
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their posterity (which was the worst 
of nations), of their kings, their wives, sons, and daughters; of 
harlots, plunderings, and such things, which considered in them- 
selves, are not even worthy to be named in the Word, except that 
by them are represented and signified such things as are in the 


Lord’s kingdom: these are worthy of the Word. A.2607. 


*The terms ‘correspondence,’ ‘significative’ and ‘representative’ are dis- 
tinguishable from two points of view. From the point of view taken here 
any object in the true order of nature is a correspondence; an event or 
person who has come (perhaps arbitrarily) to stand for a spiritual reality, 
is a ‘representative,’ while words used of a situation so represented are 
‘significative’ (See A.665(2) in addition to present excerpt). From an- 
other point of view (the manner of entering on the spiritual meaning of 
anything correspondential) we have the terms ‘perceptive, ‘significative’ 
and ‘representative’ in that order. When the correspondence is intuitively 
recognized we have a ‘perceptive’; when intellectually grasped a ‘significa- 
tive’; when not appreciated a ‘representative’ (see A.1416e). 


165. The books of the Word are all those which have the 
internal sense; but those which have it not are not the Word. “The 
Books of the Word in the Old Testament are the five books of 
Moses, the book of Joshua, the book of Judges, the two books of 
Samuel, the two books of Kings, the Psalms of David, the Prophets, 
Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, 
Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 
Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi: and in the New Testament, the four 
Evangélists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and the Apocalypse. 
A.10325. 


166. In the Evangelists are the words of the Lord Himself, 
all which contain in them a spiritual sense, by which immediate 
communication with heaven is given; but, in the writings of the 
Apostles, there is not such a sense. Notwithstanding they are 
useful books for the Church. E.815. 


167. The spiritual sense is not the sense which shines forth 
from the sense of the letter of the Word when one is studying it 
and interpreting it to confirm a dogma of the church. “That may 
be called the literal and ecclesiastical sense of the Word. ‘The 
spiritual sense is not apparent? in the sense of the letter. It is 
interiorly within it, as the soul is in the body, as the thought of 
the understanding is in the eyes, or the love’s affection in the face. 
It is that sense chiefly that makes the Word spiritual, not only for 


STANDARD PASSAGES 217 


men but for angels also; and therefore by means of that sense the 
Word has communication with heaven. T.194. 


* True generally, but see A.2225, and following excerpt. 


168. The internal sense is not only that sense which is con- 
cealed in the external sense, but is also that which results from a 
number of passages of the sense of the letter rightly collated, and 
which is discerned by those who are enlightened by the Lord in 
respect to their intellectual. For the enlightened intellectual dis- 
criminates between apparent truths and genuine, especially be- 
tween falsities and truths, although it does not judge about real 
truths in themselves. But the intellectual cannot be enlightened 
unless it is believed that love to the Lord and charity to the 
neighbor are the principal and essential things of the church. One 
who proceeds from the acknowledgment of these provided he him- 
self is in them, sees innumerable truths; nay, he sees very many 
secrets disclosed to him, and this from interior acknowledgment, 
according to the degree of his enlightenment from the Lord. 


ERSIVABE 


169. The sense of the Word is circumstanced in accordance 
with the heavens. ‘The highest sense of the Word, in which the 
subject dealt with is the Lord, is for the inmost or third heaven. 
Its internal sense, in which the subject dealt with is the Lord’s 
kingdom, is for the middle or second heaven. ‘The lower * sense of 
the Word, in which the internal sense is determined to the nation 
that is named, is for the lowest or first heaven. “Che lowest or 
literal is for the human being while still in this world, who 1s 
nevertheless of such a nature that the interior sense and even the 
internal and the highest sense can be communicated to him. For 
the human being has communication with the three heavens, for 
he is created in the image of the three heavens, so that when he 
lives in love to the Lord and charity to the neighbor, he is a heaven 
in the least form. Hence it is that the Lord’s kingdom is within 
one, as the Lord Himself teaches in Luke: ‘Behold, the kingdom 
of God is within you” (xvii.21). A.4279. 


Later in this number called the ‘internal historical sense.’ 


170. In order to remove all doubt as to the character of the 
Word, the Lord has revealed to me the Word’s internal sense. In 
its essence this sense is spiritual, and in relation to the external 
sense, which is natural, is as soul is to body. “This sense is the 
spirit which gives life to the letter. It can therefore bear witness 


218 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


to the Divinity and holiness of the Word, and convince even the 
natural man, if he is willing to be convinced. S.4. 


171. Without the spiritual sense who would know what is 
signified by all things of the tabernacle, like the ark, the mercy- 
seat, the cherubim, the lampstand, the altar of incense, the bread 
of faces on the table, and the veils and curtains? Without the 
spiritual sense who would know what is signified by Aaron’s holy 
garments, by his coat, cloak, ephod, the urim and thummim, his 
mitre and other things? Without the spiritual sense who would 
know what is signified by all that was commanded about burnt- 
offerings, sacrifices, meat-offerings and drink-offerings? and also 
about sabbaths and feasts? ‘The truth is that not the least com- 
mand concerning them but signified something of the Lord, heaven 
and the church. 8.16. 


172. The knowledge of correspondences, by which the spiritual 
sense of the Word is had, has been revealed at this day because 
Divine truths of the Church are being brought to light now, and 
it is of these that the spiritual sense consists. When these truths 
are in man the sense of the letter cannot be perverted. For the 
sense of the letter may be turned in any direction. If to what is 
false, its inward holiness perishes, and with it its external holiness; 
turned to what its true, its holiness remains. “That the spiritual 
sense would be opened at this time is meant by John’s seeing heaven 
opened and then a white horse; also by his seeing and hearing an 
angel standing in the sun calling all to the great supper (Revela- 
tion xix.11-18). “That this sense would not, however, be recog- 
nized for a long time, is meant by the beast and the kings of the 
earth being about to make war with Him Who sat on the white 
horse (xix.19); also by the dragon’s persecuting the woman who 
brought forth the man-child, even to the wilderness, where he cast 
water like a flood out of his mouth to overwhelm her (xii. 13-17). 


elvee O72 


* Especially by the motives in going to it. See Excerpt n.153. 


173. We read in many places that the Lord will come in the 
clouds of heaven (as in Matthew xvii.5, xxiv.30, xxvi.64; Mark 
xiv.61, 62; Luke ix.34, 35; xxi.27; Apocalypse i.7, xiv.14, 
Daniel vii.13). No one has known hitherto what is meant by the 
‘clouds of heaven.’ Men have believed that the Lord would 
appear in them in person. ‘The ‘clouds of heaven’ mean the Word 
in the sense of the letter, and the ‘glory’ and ‘power’ in which He 
is then to come (Matthew xxiv.30) mean the spiritual sense of 


STANDARD PASSAGES 219 


the Word, hitherto hidden. No one has as yet had the least con- 
jecture that there is a spiritual sense in the Word, such as this 
sense is in itself. But as the Lord has now opened to me the 
spiritual sense of the Word, and has given me to be associated with 
angels and spirits, in their world as one of them, it is disclosed that 
a ‘cloud of heaven’ means the Word in the natural sense, and 
‘glory’ the Word in the spiritual sense, and ‘power’ the Lord’s 
power through the Word. . . . In order that the Lord might 
be present with me continually, He has unfolded to me the spiritual 
sense of His Word, wherein is Divine truth in its very light, and 
it is in this light that He is continually present. His presence in 
the Word is by means of the spiritual sense and in no other way. 
Through the light of this sense He passes into the obscurity of the 
literal sense, which is like what takes place when the light of the 
sun in day-time is passing through an intervening cloud. ‘The 
sense of the letter of the Word is like a cloud, and the spiritual 
sense is the glory, the Lord Himself being the sun from which the 
light comes, and so He is the Word. ‘T.776, 780. 


174. The spiritual sense of the Word will be imparted from 
now on only to one who is in genuine truths from the Lord. For no 
one can see the spiritual sense except from the Lord alone, nor 
unless he is in genuine truths from Him. For the spiritual sense 
of the Word treats solely of the Lord and His kingdom; and is 
the sense in which His angels are in heaven, for it is His Divine 


truth there. S.26. 
175. The sense of the letter of the Word is the basis, the 


containant, and the support of its spiritual and celestial senses. 
4 . There are three + senses in the Word. ‘The celestial is its 
first, the spiritual sense its middle sense, and the natural sense its 
lowest sense. From this a rational man may infer that the first of 
the Word, which is celestial, passes through the middle, which is 
spiritual, into the lowest which is natural; and thus that its lowest 
is the basis. Furthermore that the first of the Word, which is 
celestial, is in its middle, which is spiritual, and through this in 
the lowest, which is natural, and that as a result the lowest which 
is natural and is the sense of the letter, is the containant. Being 
basis 2 and containant ? the sense of the letter is foundation,’ too. 

It follows that without the sense of the letter the Word 
would be like a palace without a foundation, and thus like a palace 
in the air, and not on the earth, which would be but the phantom 
of a palace, that would vanish away. . . . So would it be with 
the heavens where angels are, without the world where men are. 


220 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


The human race is the basis, containant and foundation of the 
heavens; and the Word is among men and in them. For all the 
heavens have been discriminated into two kingdoms, called the 
celestial and the spiritual; these two are founded on a natural 
kingdom, in which men are. So therefore is it with the Word 
which is among men and in men.’ §.27, 31, 33, 34. 

*The internal historical sense of Excerpt n.169 is not being counted. 

*For help with the point of each of these terms, E.356(5), 1088(4). 


®* Note that the Word which is the substructure of the heavenly world 
is not a book, but the truth in the minds and lives of men here. 


176. There are pairs of expressions ? in the Word which appear 
to be repetitions of the same thing; like ‘waste and solitude,’ ‘foe 
and enemy,’ ‘sin and iniquity,’ ‘anger and wrath,’ ‘nation and 
people,’ ‘joy and gladness,’ ‘mourning and weeping.’ While these 
expressions appear synonymous, they are not, ‘waste,’ ‘foe,’ ‘sin,’ 
‘anger, ‘nation,’ ‘joy,’ and ‘mourning’ being predicated in the 
spiritual sense of good, and ‘solitude,’ ‘enemy,’ etc., of truth—or 
of their opposites, evil and the false. 5.84. 


So of the names ‘Jehovah’ and ‘God.’ ‘T'.253, A.3921. 


177. Divine truth is in its fulness, in its holiness, and in its 
power in the sense of the letter of the Word. For the two prior 
or interior senses, called the spiritual and celestial, are together in 
the natural sense, which is the sense of the letter. . . . There is 
in heaven and in this world a successive order and a simultaneous. 
In successive order one thing succeeds and follows another from 
highest to lowest, but in simultaneous order one thing is next to 
another from inmost to outmost. Successive order is like a column 
with successive parts from the top to the bottom, but simultaneous 
order is like a connected structure with successive circumferences 
from center to surface. . . . Apply this to the Word. Celestial, 
spiritual and natural proceed from the Lord in successive order, 
and in the last are in simultaneous order. In this way it is that 
celestial and spiritual senses are simultaneously in the natural. 
This comprehended, it may be seen how the natural sense of the 
Word—which is the sense of the letter—is the basis, containant, 
and foundation of its spiritual and celestial senses; and how in 
the sense of the letter of the Word Divine good and Divine truth 
are in their fulness, holiness and power. 

It is evident from all this that the Word in the sense of the 
letter is the very Word itself. For within this sense there are 
spirit and life, the spiritual sense being its spirit and the celestial 
its life. ‘This is what the Lord says: ‘The words that I speak 


STANDARD PASSAGES 221 


unto you are spirit and they are life” (John vi.63). The Lord 
spoke His words before the world, and in the natural sense.t The 
spiritual sense afid the celestial sense without the natural sense 
which is the sense of the letter are not the Word; for without it 
they are like spirit and life without a body, and like a palace with- 
out a foundation. §.37, 38, 39. 


* Note where this places the emphasis in the saying quoted. 


178. ‘Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven.’ 
This means that all things of the Word are by influx from the 
Divine through heaven, as is evident from the signification of 
speaking or talking from heaven, on the part of Jehovah to those 
of the church (who are meant by the sons of Israel), for that 
speech means truth Divine or the Word from the Divine through 
heaven. For what Jehovah speaks is Divine truth, thus the Word 
which is in the church, and what He speaks passes through heaven. 
It should be known that heaven is not in any certain and fixed 
place, thus not, according to the common opinion, on high, but is 
where the Divine is, thus with every one and in every one who is 
in charity and faith. For charity and faith are heaven, for they 
are from the Divine, and the angels dwell in them, too. That 
heaven is where the Divine is, i.e, where the Lord is, is plain 
from this that Mount Sinai, from which the Lord spoke, is called 
heaven here, from which is Divine truth. All things of the Word 
are signified, because Jehovah or the Lord began! then to reveal 
the Word which was to serve the human race for doctrine and 
life, first by Moses and afterward by the prophets.? That they 
might know, therefore, that the Word was from the Divine 
through heaven, the Lord Himself willed to come down and with 
a living voice proclaim the Ten Commandments, and thus show 
that what was to follow of the law, 1.e., of the Word, was in like 
manner by influx from the Divine through heaven. A.8931. 

a The Ten Commandments are spoken of as the first-fruits of the Word: 

E25) 

* Swedenborg uses this word as the Hebrews did, meaning the earlier 


spokesmen for Jehovah—like the authors of Joshua, etc-——as well as such 
prophets as Isaiah. 


179. I have been told how the Lord spoke with the prophets 4 
by whom the Word was given. He did not speak with them as 
He did with the ancients, by an influx into their interiors, but 
through spirits who were sent to them, whom He filled with His 
look, and thus inspired the words which they dictated to the 
prophets; so that it was not influx,? but dictation. As the words 


222 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


came forth directly from the Lord, each one of them was filled 
with the Divine and contains within it an internal sense, which 
is such that the angels of heaven understand*the words in a 
heavenly and spiritual sense while men understand them in a 
natural sense. “Thus has the Lord conjoined heaven and the 
world by means of the Word. 

How the Lord fills spirits with the Divine by His look has also 
‘been made clear. A spirit that has been filled with the Divine by 
the Lord knows no otherwise than that He is the Lord, and that it 
is the Divine which is speaking; and this continues until he has 
finished speaking. “Then he perceives and acknowledges that 
he is a spirit, and that he spoke from the Lord and not from him- 
self. Because this was the state of the spirits who spoke with the 
prophets they said it was Jehovah that spoke. ‘The spirits even 
called themselves Jehovah, as may be seen from the prophetic and 
historical parts of the Word. H.254. 


*See note 2, preceding excerpt. 

*It was not influx in the sense that it was influx and more—a form of 
influx which did not rest with imparting light (“influx into the interiors”) 
but which communicated idea or conviction so explicity that it was 
grasped only as it took words in the prophet. For in each case the words 
were the prophet’s, not only Hebrew, but his diction and manner of 
thought. 


180. All revelation is either from speech with angels through 
whom the Lord speaks, or from perception. . . . It is to be 
known that those in good and thence in truth, and especially those 
in good of love to the Lord, have revelation from perception; 
whereas those not in good and thence in truth can indeed have 
revelations, yet not from perception, but by a living voice heard in 
them, and thus by angels from the Lord. ‘This revelation is 
external,! but the former internal. Angels, particularly the celes- 
tial, have revelation from perception, as had also the men of the 
Most Ancient Church, and some, too, of the Ancient Church, but 
scarcely any one to-day; whereas very many, even those who have 
not been in good, have had revelations from speech without per- 
ception, and also by visions and dreams. Such were most of the 
revelations of the prophets in the Jewish Church; they heard a 
voice, they saw a vision, and they dreamed a dream; but as they 
had no perception,” they were merely verbal or visual revelations 
without perception of what they signified. For genuine perception 
comes from heaven through the Lord, and affects the intellect 
spiritually, and leads it perceptibly to think as the thing is, with an 
inward assent the source of which it is ignorant of. It supposes. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 223 


that it is in itself, and that it flows from the connection of things; 
whereas it is a dictate through heaven from the the Lord, flowing 
into the interiors of the thought, concerning things above the 
natural and sensuous, i.e., concerning things of the spiritual world 


and heaven. A.5121. 


1 Relatively; obviously, it takes place im one. 

2'The perception referred to in the Excerpt is a kind of perception, the 
intuition of a sound and undisordered love of the good. Here it also means 
perception of spiritual meanings. Perception of the force and meaning 
of their messages (in the ordinary sense of perception) of course the 
prophets had. 


181. The Divine truth proceeding from the Lord, to be heard 
and perceived, must pass to the human being by mediations. ‘The 
lowest mediation is by the spirit who is with the human being, who 
either flows into his thought, or speaks by a living voice.! A.6996. 


1'This is also influx but, as noted at Excerpt 179, it does not stop with 
thought and suggestion, but sounds in words. 


182. The precepts given by Moses, after the people came into 
the land (of Canaan) were enriched by the prophets! and then 
by King David, and at length by Solomon after the Temple was 
built, as is evident from the books of the Judges, of Samuel and of 
Kings. Coro, 52. 


1See note 2, Excerpt n.178. 


183. By means of the sense of the letter of the Word there is 
union with the Lord and association with angels. ‘There is union 
with the Lord by means of the Word because the Word treats 
solely of Him, and the Lord is consequently its all in all, and is 
called the Word. The union is in the sense of the letter because in 
that sense the Word is in its fulness, holiness and power. The union 
is not apparent to the man, but is in the affection of truth, and in his 
perception of truth, thus in the man’s love for truth and faith in it. 
‘There is association with the angels of heaven by means of the sense 
of the letter because the spiritual and celestial senses are in it, and 
the angels are in these senses, the angels of the spiritual kingdom in 
the Word’s spiritual sense, and those of the celestial kingdom in the 
celestial sense. “These senses are evolved from the Word’s natural 
sense which is the sense of the letter while a true man is in it. The 
evolution is instantaneous; consequently so is the association. We 
may illustrate by an example how from the natural sense in which 
the Word is with men, the spiritual angels draw forth their own 
sense, and the celestial theirs. “Take as an example (some) com- 


224 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


mandments of the Decalog: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ 
By ‘father and mother’ a man understands his father and mother 
on earth, and all who stand in their place, and by to ‘honor’ he 
understands to hold in honor and obey them. But a spiritual 
angel understands the Lord by ‘father’ and the church by ‘mother,’ 
and by to ‘honor’ he understands to love. A celestial angel under- 
stands the Lord’s Divine love by ‘father’ and His Divine wisdom 
by ‘mother,’ and by to honor to do what is good from Him. ‘Thou 
shalt not steal.’ By to ‘steal’ a man understands to steal, defraud, 
or under any pretext take from his neighbor his goods. A spiritual 
angel understands to deprive others of their truths of faith and 
goods of charity by means Of falsities and evils. And a celestial 
angel understands to attribute to himself what is the Lord’s, and to 
claim for himself His righteousness and merit. Wonderful to say, 
the angels draw out their senses without knowing what the man 
is thinking about, and yet the thoughts of the angels and of men 
make a one by correspondences, like end, cause and effect. More- 
over ends are actually in the celestial kingdom, causes in the 
spiritual, and effects in the natural kingdom. ‘This conjunction by 
means of correspondences is such from creation. ‘This then is the 
source of man’s association with angels by means of the Word. 


De O2s OS Ol. 


184. If faith in the Word perishes, man cannot live spiritually, 
for man has spiritual life through faith derived from the Word. 
A .9033. 


185. In passing through the three heavens from the Lord to 
men in the world, Divine truth is written and made the Word in 
each heaven. “The Word is therefore the union of the heavens 
with one another, and of the heavens with the church in the world. 
Hence there flows in from the Lord through the heavens a holy 
Divine with the man who acknowledges the Divine in the Lord and 
the holy in the Word, when he reads it. Such a man can be 
instructed and can draw wisdom from the Word as from the Lord 
Himself or from heaven itself, in the measure that he loves it, and 
thus can be nourished with the same food as the angels are fed 
with, and in which there is life, according to these words of the 
Lord: “The words that I speak to you, are spirit, and life’; ‘The 
water which I will give you shall be a well of water springing up 
into eternal life’; ‘Man does not live by bread alone, but by every 
word which proceeds from the mouth of God’; ‘Labor for the food 

. which abides to eternal life, which the Son of man will give 


you. Such is the Word. E.1074. 


STANDARD PASSAGES 225 


186. There can be no conjunction with heaven unless there is 
somewhere on earth a Church where the Word is and the Lord is 
known by it. It is sufficient that there be a church where the 
Word is, even though it should consist of few relatively. The 
Lord is present by it, nevertheless, in the whole world. ‘The light 
is greatest where those are who have the Word. ‘Thence it ex- 
tends itself as from a center out to the last periphery. Thence 
comes the enlightenment of nations and peoples outside the Church, 


too, by the Word. S.104, 106. 


187. Doctrine? should be drawn from the sense of the letter of 
the Word, and be confirmed by it. For there and not elsewhere 
the Lord is present with man, and enlightens him and teaches him 
the truths of the church. Moreover the Lord never operates any- 
thing except in what is full, and the Word is in its fulness in the 
sense of the letter. . . . This is why doctrine should be drawn 
from the sense of the letter. By means of doctrine the Word not 
only becomes intelligible, but also shines as it were with light, for 
without doctrine it is not understood, and is like a lampstand with- 
out a lamp. The Lord says, “Judge not, that ye be not judged; 
for with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged’ (Matthew 
vii.1, 2; Luke vi.37). Without doctrine this might be cited 
to confirm the notion that it is not to be said of what is evil that 
it is evil, thus that an evil person is not to be judged to be evil; 
yet according to doctrine it is lawful to judge, but justly; for 
the Lord says, ‘Judge righteous judgment’ (John vii.24). By 
means of doctrine therefore the Word is understood, and is like 
a lampstand with a lighted lamp. “The man then sees more than 
he had seen before, and also understands the things he had not 


understood before. $,53, 51, 54. 


* Swedenborg offers a simple idea of doctrine: “That which is to be 
believed and done.” 


188. Every one within the church first procures to himself the 
truths which are of faith from doctrinals, and also ought so to 
procure them, for he is not yet endowed with the judgment to 
enable him to see them for himself from the Word. In this case, 
however, truths are nothing but knowledges. But when he is able 
to view them from his own judgment, if he does not consult the 
Word to the intent that he may thence see whether they be true, 
they remain with him as knowledges. But if he consults the Word 
from the affection and the end of knowing truths, then, when he 
has found them, he procures to himself those things which are of 


226 - AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


faith from the genuine Fountain; and in such case the truths are 
appropriated to him from the Divine. A.5402. 


189. He who does not know the arcana of heaven can but 
believe that the Word is supported without doctrine from it; for 
he supposes that the Word in the letter, or the literal sense of the 
Word, is doctrine itself.1 But be it known that all the doctrine 
of the church must be from the Word, and that doctrine from 
any other source than the Word is not doctrine in which there is 
anything of the church, still less anything of heaven. But doctrine 
must be collected! from the Word, and when it is collected, the 
man must be in enlightenment from the Lord; he is in enlighten- 
ment when he is in the love of truth for the sake of truth, and 
not for the sake of self and the world. ‘These are they who are 
enlightened in the Word when they read it, and who see truth, and 
from it make doctrine for themselves. The reason of this is that 
such communicate with heaven, thus with the Lord; and being 
enlightened by the Lord in this way they are led to see the truths 
of the Word such as they are in heaven; for the Lord inflows 
through heaven into their understandings; for it is the man’s 
interior understanding which is enlightened. And at the same 
time the Lord flows in with faith, by means of the co-operation 
of the new will, whose nature it is to be affected with truth for 
the sake of truth. From all this it can now be seen how the doc- 
trine of good and truth is given man by the Lord. 

That this doctrine supports the Word in respect to its literal 
or external sense, is plain to every one who reflects. For every 
one in the church who thinks from doctrine sees truths in the 
Word from his doctrine and according thereto, and explains those 
which do not coincide with it; and those which seem to be op- 
posed to it he passes by as though he did not see or understand 
them; that all do so, even heretics, is known. But they who are in 
the genuine doctrine of truth from the Word, and in enlightenment 
when they read the Word, see everywhere truths that agree, and 
nothing whatever that is opposed. For they do not dwell on what is 
said therein according to appearances, and according to the common 
apprehension of men, because they know that if the appearances 
are unfolded, and as it were unswathed, the truth is laid bare. 
Nor are they led astray by falsities from the fallacies of the senses 

.; nor by falsities from the loves of self and the world, as is 
the case with those meant by ‘Babel.’ As none of these can be 
enlightened, they hatch out from the external sense alone a doctrine 
in favor of their loves, and add thereto many things of their own; 


STANDARD PASSAGES 227 


whereby the Word is by no means upheld, but falls. Be it known 
that the internal sense of the Word contains the genuine doctrine 


of the church. A.9424(2, 3). 


*It has been an old practice to pick up an isolated statement from 
Scripture and make it the doctrine on the subject. These passages indicate 
Swedenborg’s departure from that use of the Scriptures. He brings together 
all said on a subject and gathers the teaching from the whole. 


190. It might be believed that the doctrine of genuine truth 
could be procured by means of the spiritual sense of the Word 
which is to be had through a knowledge of correspondences. But 
doctrine is not procured by means of that sense, but is only lighted 
up, arid corroborated. For, as has been said, no one comes into 
the spiritual sense of the Word by means of correspondences unless 
he is first in genuine truths from doctrine. If a man is not first 
in genuine truths he may falsify the Word by means of some 
correspondences with which he is acquainted, by connecting them 
up and interpreting them so as to confirm what clings to his mind 
from a pre-conceived principle. ‘The spiritual sense, moreover, is 
given one only by the Lord, and is guarded by Him as heaven is, 
for heaven is in it. It is of first importance therefore for a man 


to study the Word in the sense of the letter; from this alone is 
doctrine had. S.56. 


191. That the Lord is the Word, because the Word is from 
Him, and He is in it, is evident in John: ‘In the beginning was 
the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word; 
in Him was life, and the life was the light of men; the Word 
was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, the 
glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and 
truth’ (i.1, 4, 14; see also Revelation xix.11, 13, 16). And as 
the Lord is the Word, He is doctrine too; for there is no other 
doctrine which is itself Divine. A.2533. 


192. At the present day many believe that when it is said of the 
Lord that He fulfilled the law, the meaning is that He fulfilled 
all the commandments of the Decalog, and thus became righteous- 
ness, and also justified men of this world through this article of 
faith. “This is not meant, however, but that the Lord fulfilled all 
things written concerning Him in the Law and the Prophets, Le., 
in Scripture, throughout, for this treats solely of Him. ‘The 
reason why many have believed differently, is that they have not 
examined Scripture and seen what is meant by ‘the Law’ there. 
‘The Law there means, in a restricted sense, the ten commandments 


228 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


of the Decalog; in a wider sense all things written by Moses in 
the five books; and in the widest sense, all things of the Word. 

That the whole Word was written about the Lord, and 
that He came into the world to fulfil it, He also taught His dis- 
ciples before His departure, in these tvords: ‘Jesus said to His 
disciples, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
have spoken. Ought not the Christ to suffer these things, and to 
enter on His glory? And beginning at Moses and all the 
Prophets, He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things 
concerning Himself.’ Luke xxiv.25-27. ‘Jesus said to His dis- 
ciples, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was 
yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written 
in the law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, con- 
cerning Me.’ Luke xxiv.44. That in the world the Lord fulfilled 
all things of the Word, even to the veriest singulars in it, is 
evident from these His own words: ‘Verily I say unto you, Till 
heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall not pass from 
the law, till all things be accomplished’ (Matthew v.18). From 
these passages it may now be seen clearly that by its being said that 
the Lord fulfilled all things of the law is not meant that He ful- 
filled all the commandments of the Decalog, but that He fulfilled 
all things of the Word. L.8, 11. 


193. The idea of God enters into all things of the church, of 
religion and of worship. “Theological matters have their seat 
above all others in the human mind; and supreme therein is the 
idea of God. Consequently if that is false, all things which follow 
derive from the source from which they flow either that they are 
false, or have been falsified. For that which is supreme, which 
is also the inmost, forms the very essence of its sequences; and 
the essence, as a soul, forms its sequences into a body after its own 
image, and when such a soul of error in its descent lights upon 
truths, it infects them also with its own blemish and error. B.40. 


194. How important it is to have a just idea of God may appear 
from this, that the idea of God makes the inmost of thought with 
all who have any religion, for all things of religion and of worship 
regard God. And as God is universally and particularly in all 
things of religion and of worship, therefore, unless there is a just 
idea of God, there can be no communication with the heavens. 
Hence it is that in the spiritual world every nation + is allotted its 
place according to its idea of God as a Man?”; for in that idea, 
and in no other, is an idea of the Lord. That the state of a man’s 
life after death is according to the idea of God confirmed in him, 


STANDARD PASSAGES 229 


is evident from the opposite, namely, that the denial of God makes 
hell, and, in the Christian world,* the denial of the Divinity of 
the Lord. W.13. 


*'The teaching thinks of national genius as immortal, as it does of a 
nation as a unit in spirit before the Lord (see n.96). 

*To be explained § 101. 

® As God in the fulness of a Divine Humanity. 

“Where God has presented Himself in Jesus Christ, higher insight 
can be expected. 


195. By an interior enlightenment a rational! man perceives, 
as soon as he hears it, that God is One; that He is omnipresent; 
that all good is from Him; also that all things have relation to good 
and truth; and that all good is from good itself, and all truth from 
truth itself. Man perceives these things and other like things 
interiorly in himself when he hears them; and he has this per- 
ception because he has a rationality that is in the light of heaven, 
which gives enlightenment. P.168. 


*'To the teaching the instinctive ideas named are part of a sound and 
undisordered mind. 


196. In the whole world there is not found a nation possessed 
of religion and sound reason, which does not acknowledge that 
there is a God and that He is one. For in consequence of a Divine 
influx into the souls? of men, there is in every man an internal 
dictate, that God is, and that He is One. ‘There are men, never- 
theless, who deny God, who acknowledge nature instead of God, 
who worship several gods, and even some who worship images for 
gods, for the reason that they have obstructed the interiors of 
their reason or understanding with worldly and corporeal matters, 
and have thereby obliterated their primitive or infantile conception 
of God, and at the same time have banished religion from their 
breasts, and cast it behind their backs. ‘I’.9. 


* This means that innermost soul of which in §S§ 5, 6. 


197. In every religion it is acknowledged that God is omni- 
present and omniscient. So men pray to God that He will hear, 
and see, and have mercy; which they would not do unless they 
believed in His omnipresence and omniscience. ‘This belief is 
from an influx out of heaven into those that have any religion, 
for it does not come into question from religion itself whether it 
is a fact or how it comes about. At this day, however natural 
men have multiplied, especially in the Christian world, and these 
see nothing of God; and do not believe unless they see (if they 


230 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


say they believe it is either from civility or in blind knowledge, or 
from hypocrisy) ; and yet they have the ability to see. E.1216(2). 


198. The truths which are to be of faith, indeed, flow in by the 
hearing, and so are implanted in the mind, thus below the soul.* 
But by these truths one is only disposed for receiving the influx 
from God through the soul; and as the disposition is, such is the 
reception, and such the transformation of natural faith into spirit- 
ual faith. . . . The faith of God enters man by a prior way, 
which is from the soul into the higher parts of the understanding ; 
but knowledges concerning God enter by a posterior way, because 
they are drawn by the understanding through the senses of the 
body from the revealed Word. A meeting of the influxes takes 
place in the midst of the understanding. ‘There natural faith, 
which is only persuasion, becomes spiritual, which is real acknowl- 
edgment. “Thus the human understanding is like an exchange, in 


which the change is made. T.8, 11. 


1 Again, of what is called the “inmost” in man (§§ 5, 6). 


199. God is One, and Infinite. The true quality of the In- 
finite does not appear; for the human mind, however highly 
analytical and exalted, is itself finite, and the finiteness in it cannot 
be laid aside. It is not fitted, therefore, to see the Infinity of God, 
and thus God, as He is in Himself, but can see God from behind 
in shadow; as it is said of Moses, when he asked to see God, that 
he was placed in a cleft of the rock, and saw His hinder side; 
“His hinder side’ meaning what? is visible in the world and 
perceptible in the Word. How vain then it is to wish to compre- 
hend what God is in His very being or in His substance! It is 
enough to acknowledge God from things finite, that is created, in 


which He is infinitely. T.28. 
1 Note the pithy phrases. 


200. Divine things, which are infinite, cannot be apprehended 
except by means of finite things of which man can form some idea. 


A.3938. 
201. God is uncreated because He is Himself life. Life can 


create, but cannot be created, for to be created is to have existence 
from another, and if life had existence from another there would 
be another being even as regards life, and that life would be life 
in itself. If this First were not life in itself it would be either from 
another or from itself; and you cannot say life from itself because 


STANDARD PASSAGES 231 


from itself involves coming forth, and that coming forth would be 
from nothing, and from nothing nothing can come forth. 

This First, which has being in itself and from which all things 
have been created, is God, who is called Jehovah because He is 


Being in Himself. E.1126, 


202. God Is Love itself and Wisdom itself, and these two con- 
stitute His essence. T'.37. 


203. Unless He were a Man God could not have created the 
universe and all things in it. Any intelligent person can grasp 
this clearly, for he cannot deny that in God there is Love and 
Wisdom, mercy and clemency, and also goodness itself and truth 
itself; these are from God. And because he cannot deny this, 
neither can he deny that God is Man. For abstractly from man 
not one of these is possible. Man is their subject, and to separate 
them from their subject is to say that they are not. ‘Think of 
wisdom, and place it outside of man—is it anything? Can you 
conceive of it as something ethereal, or as something flamy? You 
cannot; unless perchance you conceive of it as being within these; 
and if within these, it must be wisdom in a form such as man has; 
it must be wholly in the form of man, not one thing can be lacking 
if wisdom is to be in that form. In a word, the form of wisdom 
is man; and because man is the form of wisdom, he is also the form 
of love, mercy, clemency, good and truth, because these make one 


with wisdom. W.286. 


204. Every one who thinks from clear reason sees that the 
universe was not created out of nothing. For he sees that nothing 
can be made of nothing. Nothing is nothing, and to make anything 
of nothing is contradiction, and the contradictory is contrary to the 
light of truth, which is from Divine Wisdom. Whatever is not 
from Divine Wisdom is not from Divine Omnipotence, either. 
Every one who thinks from clear reason sees also that all things 
have been created out of a substance which is Substance in itself. 
For that is Being itself, out of which every thing that is can take 
form; and since God alone is Substance in itself, and therefore 
Being itself, it is evident that from this source alone do things 
come to be. Many have seen this, for reason causes one to see it; 
and yet they have not dared to confirm it, fearing lest they might 
be led to think that the created universe is God, because from God, 
or that nature is from itself, and consequently that the inmost of 
nature is what is called God. For this reason, although many 


232 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


have seen that the formation of all things is from God alone and 
out of His Being, yet they have not dared to go beyond their first 
thought on the subject, lest their understanding should become 
entangled in a so-called Gordian knot, beyond the possibility of 
release. Nor could they release their understanding, for they have 
thought of God, and of the creation of the universe by God, from 
time and space, which are properties of nature; and from nature 
no one can have any perception of God and of the creation of the 
universe; but every one whose understanding is in any interior 
light can have a perception of nature and of its creation out of 
God, because God is not in time and space. . . . The Divine 
apart from space fills all the spaces of the universe, and apart from 
time is in all time. . . . And although God has created the 
universe and all things of it out of Himself, yet nothing whatever 
in the created universe is God. W.283. 


205. ‘The essence of love ts to love others outside of oneself, to 
desire to be one with them, and to bless them from oneself. “These 
essentials of the Divine love were the cause of the creation of the 
universe, and are the cause of its conservation. “That those three 
essentials of the Divine love were the cause of creation may be seen 
clearly from an attentive examination of them. ‘That the first, 
which is loving others outside of oneself, was a cause, is evident 
from the universe, which is outside of God, as the world is outside 
of the sun, but into which He can extend and exercise His love, 
and so rest. We read also that after God had created heaven 
and earth, He rested; and thus the Sabbath day was made 
(Genesis ii.2, 3). That the second essential, which is desiring to 
be one with others, was a cause, is evident from the creation of man 
in the image and likeness of God; by which is meant that man was 
made a form to receive love and wisdom from God, so that God 
can unite Himself with him, and, for his sake with all things and 
every thing of the universe, which are no other than means; for 
conjunction with a final cause is also a conjunction with the medi- 
ate causes. “That all things were created for the sake of man is 
plain also from the book of creation (Genesis i1.28-30). “That the 
third essential, which is blessing others from oneself, is a cause, is 
evident from the angelic heaven, which is provided for every one 
who receives God’s love; there the blessedness of all is from God 
alone. “Those three essentials of God’s love are also the cause of 
the conservation of the universe because conservation is perpetual 
creation, as subsistence is perpetual existence; and the Divine love 
from eternity to eternity is the same; thus such as it was in creat- 


STANDARD PASSAGES 233 


ing the world, such it is and continues to be in the world created. 


T.43, 46. 


206. It would be the work of a large volume to set forth and 
demonstrate these things* in a proper manner one by one. More- 
over it does not enter strictly into the system of theology of this 
book, as a lemma or argument. I shall only adduce some Memora- 
bilia,, from which an idea of the creation of the universe by God 
may be conceived, and from conception some birth representing it 
may be produced. T.75e. 


*Swedenborg’s Memorabilia are records (like the following Excerpt) 
of other-world experiences of his. 


207. Since I have been introduced by the Lord into your world, 
I have perceived how idle it would be to try to form any conclusion 
about the creation of the universe without first knowing there are 
two worlds. . . . I then also saw there are two suns, one from 
which all things spiritual come, and the other from which all 
natural things flow. The sun from which all things spiritual 
come, is nothing but the love of Jehovah God, Who is in its midst, 
and the sun from which things natural flow, is nothing but fire. 
Having learned these facts, . . . I was permitted to see that 
the universe was created by Jehovah God by means of the sun in 
the midst of which He ts. . . . How creation progressed from 
its primordial state it would take too much space to explain, but 
when I have been in enlightenment I have perceived that by means 
of the light and heat from the sun of your world, spiritual atmos- 
pheres, which in themselves are substantial, were created one from 
another. Because there were three, and thence three degrees of 
them, three heavens were made; one for the angels who are in the 
highest degree of love and wisdom, another for the angels who are 
in the second degree, and the third for the angels who are in the 
lowest degree: but, because this spiritual universe cannot exist 
without a natural universe, in which it may produce its effects and 
uses, that then the sun from which all natural things proceed was 
created together with it; and by this likewise, by means of light 
and heat, three atmospheres encompassing the former, as the shell 
does the kernel, or the bark of a tree the wood; and at last by 
means of these, the terraqueous globe, where are men, beasts, and 
fishes, also trees, shrubs, and herbs, was formed of different kinds 
of earths, which consist of loam, stones, and minerals. But this is 
the most general kind of sketch of the creation. T.76. 


* A number of sweeping propositions about the creation of the world. 


234 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


208. The object of creation was an angelic heaven from the 
human race; in other words, mankind, in whom God might be able 
to dwell as in His residence. For this reason man was created a 
form of Divine order. God is in him, and as far as he lives accord- 
ing to Divine order, fully so; but if he does not live according to 
Divine order, still God is in him, but in his highest parts, endow- 
ing him with the ability to understand truth and to will what is 
good. But as far as man lives contrary to order, so far he shuts 
up the lower parts of his mind or spirit, and prevents God from 
descending and filling them with His presence. “Then God is in 
him, but he is not in God. ‘T.66, 70, 


209. In regard to foresight and providence in general, there is 
foresight with respect to man,! and providence with respect to 
the Lord. 

The Lord foresaw from eternity what the human race would be, 
and what the quality of each member of it would be, and that evil 
would continually increase, till at length man would of himself 
rush headlong into hell. On this account, the Lord has not only 
provided means, by which man may be turned from hell and led to 
heaven, but also by His providence continually turns and leads 
him. The Lord also foresaw, that never would any good be 
rooted in man, except in his free-will, since whatever is not rooted 
in free-will, is dissipated on the first approach of evil and tempta- 
tion. ‘This the Lord foresaw, and also that man of himself, or of 
his free-will, would thus incline towards the deepest hell, on which 
account the Lord provides, that in case a man should not suffer him- 
self to be led in freedom to heaven, he may still be turned towards 
a milder hell, but in case he suffer himself to be led in freedom to 
what is good, he may be led to heaven. Hence it is manifest what 
foresight means, and what providence, and that the things which 
are foreseen are thus provided for. And hence it may appear, how 
great an error it is to believe, that the Lord has not foreseen, and 
does not see, the most individual things in man, and that He does 
not foresee and lead in them, when the truth really is, that the 
Lord’s foresight and providence is in the very minutest of all these 
most individual things, and in things so very minute, that it is im- 
possible by any stretch of thought to comprehend a thousand 
thousandth part of them. Every smallest moment of man’s life 
contains in it a series of consequences extending to eternity, for 
each moment is a new beginning of subsequent ones, and this is the 
case with all and singular the moments of his life both in regard 
to his understanding and will. And as the Lord foresaw from 


STANDARD PASSAGES 235 


eternity what would be man’s quality, and what it would be to 
eternity, it is manifest that the Divine Providence is operative in 
the most particular and individual things respecting him, governing 
and inclining him, as was said, to such a quality, and this by a 
continual management of his freedom. A.3854. 

Conditions have been brought about by the race, not in the Divine 


provision at all, which have however been foreseen by the Lord. Hence 
there is previdence (‘foresight’) as well as providence. 


210. The Lord foresees and sees each and all things to the most 
minute, and provides and disposes all, yet some by permission, some 
by admission, some by leave, some in good-pleasure, and some of 


His will. A.1755. 


211. Because heaven was the end in creation, it is the end of 
His Divine Providence. P.27. 


212. In all that proceeds from the Lord the Divine providence 
is first, for it is continually in the end for the sake of which the 
universe was created. “The activity and progress of the end through 
means is what is called Divine Providence. Since, then, the 
Divine that goes forth is Himself, and the Divine providence 1s the 
primary thing that goes forth, it follows that to act contrary to the 
laws of His Divine providence is to act contrary to Himself. 

It may be said furthermore, that the Lord is Providence, as it 
is said that God is Order, for the Divine providence is Divine order 
with regard above all to the salvation of man. As order is impossi- 
ble without laws, for laws are what constitute order, and every law 
derives from order that it is order, it follows that God, being order, 


is the law of His order. P.331. 


213. There are laws of the Divine Providence that are un- 
known to men. ‘These laws are what make the nature of Provi- 
dence known; and only one who knows its nature, can acknowledge 
it, having some view of it then. 

It is a law of the Divine Providence that the human being act 
from freedom in accord with reason. 

It is a law of the Divine Providence that as if of himself a man 
should put evils away as sins in the external + man; in this way 
the Lord is able, and in no other, to put evils away in the internal 4 
man, and at the same time in the external. 

It is a law of the Divine Providence that man should not be 
compelled by external means to think and will, and thus to believe 
and love, the things of religion, but should guide himself, and at 
times compel himself. 


236 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


It is a law of the Divine Providence that the human being 
should be led and taught by the Lord from heaven by means of 
the Word, and by means of doctrines and preachings from the 
Word, and thus to all appearance as if of himself. 

It is a law of the Divine Providence that nothing of the opera- 
tion of the Divine Providence should be evident to man’s percep- 
tions or senses, but that he should know about it, however, and 
acknowledge it. 

Man is admitted interiorly ? into truths of faith and into goods 
of charity only so far as he can be kept in them to the end of 
his liter wec 7 ciel UU meral. 


11s the external and internal of thought referred to n.12, note. 
? With the heart and will. 


214. There are no laws of permission by themselves or apart 
from laws of the Divine providence, but the two are the same. 
When, therefore, God is said to permit, it is not meant that He 
wills, but that on account of the end, which is salvation, He can- 
not avert. Whatever is done for the sake of the end, which is 
salvation, is according to laws of the Divine providence. For the 
Divine providence is constantly moving in a way diverse from and 
contrary to man’s will, continually intent upon its end; and in 
consequence, at every instant of its operation or at every step of 
its progress, where it observes man to be swerving from that end, 
it guides, bends, and directs him according to its laws, by leading 
him away from evil and leading him to good. ‘That this cannot 
be done without the permission of evil will be seen in what follows. 
Moreover, nothing can be permitted without a reason, and the 
reason can be found only in some law of the Divine providence, 
which law teaches why it is permitted. P.234. 


215. God is omnipotent because He has all power from Himself; 
all others have it from Him. His Power and Will are one; and 
since He wills nothing but what is good, therefore He can do 
nothing but what is good. God is also goodness itself; and there- 
fore when He does good He is in Himself, and go out of Himself, 
He cannot. It is a prevalent opinion to-day that God’s Omni- 
potence is like the absolute power of a king in the world, who of 
his good pleasure can do what he will, pardon and condemn as 
he wills, make the guilty guiltless, declare the faithless faithful, 
exalt the unworthy and undeserving above the worthy and de- 
serving, in fact, under any pretext whatever deprive his subjects 
of their goods, and sentence them to death, and other things of the 


STANDARD PASSAGES 237 


kind. Yet if Divine Omnipotence extended to the doing of evil 
as well as of good, what would be the difference between God and 
the devil, other than that between two monarchs, one of whom 
is a king and at the same time a tyrant, and the other a tyrant 
whose power is fettered? If, according to modern faith, God’s 
omnipotence were absolute, with respect to doing good and doing 
evil both, would it not be possible, in fact, easy, to raise all hell to 
heaven, and to turn devils and satans into angels, and on earth to 
purge every wicked man from his sins in a moment, and renew, and 
sanctify, and regenerate him, from a son of wrath making him a 
son of grace, and so justify him? In His Omnipotence God 
cannot do this, however, for it is contrary to the laws of His own 
order in the universe, and at the same time contrary to the laws 
of order inscribed on the human being. ‘These are to the effect 
that God and man shall unite themselves mutually from both 


pideswe 1 490,90 74758; 


Research Excerpts: on Omnipresence, T.30; on Omniscience, T.59-62. 


216. The many angels who appeared before the coming of the 
Lord into the world were Jehovah Himself in human form, i.e., 
in the form of an angel. ‘This is very plain from the fact that the 
angels who appeared were called Jehovah, for example those who 
appeared to Abraham (Genesis xvili.1, 13, 14, 17, 20, 26, 33); 
the angel, too, who appeared to Gideon, of whom in Judges (vi. 12, 
14, 16, 22-24); besides others elsewhere. Jehovah Himself in 
human form, or what is the same, in the form of an angel, was the 
Lord. At that time His Divine Human appeared as an angel. 
Of this the Lord Himself speaks in John: “Jesus said, Abraham 
rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad. Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am” (viii.56, 58). 
“Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine own self with the glory 
which I had with Thee before the world was” (xvii.5). That 
Jehovah could appear in no other way is also evident from the 
words of the Lord in John: “Ye have not heard the voice of the 
Father at any time, nor seen His shape’ (v.37). “Not that any 
man hath seen the Father, save He who is with the Father, He 
hath seen the Father” vi.46). From these passages it may be 
known what is meant by the Lord from eternity. A.9315. 


217. Jehovah God had from eternity a Human? such as the 
angels in the heavens have, although of infinite essence and there- 
fore Divine, but did not have such a human as men on the earth 
have. But Jehovah God assumed such a human as men on earth 


238 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


have, in accordance with His own Divine Order, which is that it 


should be conceived, born, grow up, and be gradually initiated into 
Divine Wisdom and Divine Love. Can. “Redeemer,” vii, 1, 2. 


*Called the pre-incarnation Humanity. See nn.218, 245. 


218. It has been told me from heaven, that in the Lord from 
eternity, Who is Jehovah, before His assumption of a Human in 
the world, the two prior degrees existed actually, and the third 
degree potentially, as they do also with angels; but that after the 
assumption of a Human in the world, He put on over these the 
third degree, called the natural, thereby becoming Man, like a 
man in the world; but with the difference, that in the Lord this 
degree, like the prior degrees, is infinite and uncreated, while in 
angel and in man they are all finite and created. For the Divine 
which, apart from space, had filled all spaces, penetrated even to 
the outmosts of nature; yet before the assumption of the Human, 
the Divine influx into the natural degree was mediate through the 
angelic heavens but after the assumption it was immediate from 
Himself. This is the reason why all churches in the world before 
His Advent were representative of spiritual and celestial things, 
but after His Advent became spiritual-natural and celestial- 
natural, and representative worship was abolished. ‘This also was 
the reason why the sun of the angelic heaven, which is the first pro- 
ceeding of His Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, shone out, after 
the assumption of the human nature, with a greater effulgence and 
splendor than before the assumption. ‘This is meant by the words 
in Isaiah: “In that day the light of the moon shall be as the light 
of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as the light 
of seven days” (xxx.26). This is said + of the state of heaven and 
the church after the Lord’s coming into the world. . . . The 
mediate enlightenment of men by way of the angelic heaven, which 
existed before the Lord’s coming, may be likened to the light of 
the moon, which is the mediate light of the sun; and because after 
His coming this was made immediate, it is said in Jsaiah, that the 
light of the moon should be as the light of the sun; and in David: 
“In His days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace 
until there is no longer any moon” (Ixxii.7). ‘This is also said * 


of the Lord. W.233. 


*More especially in the deeper sense of Scripture. 


219. There are two things which make God’s essence, the 
Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom; or, what is the same, the 
Divine Good and the Divine Truth. ‘These two are also meant 


STANDARD PASSAGES 239 


in the Word by “Jehovah God;” by ‘‘Jehovah,” the Divine Love 
or the Divine Good, and by “God,” the Divine Wisdom or the 
Divine Truth; thence it is that in the Word they are distinguished 
in various ways, and sometimes only Jehovah is named, and some- 
times only God; for where Divine Good is treated of, there 
“Jehovah” is said; and where Divine Truth, there ‘“God;” and 
where both, there “Jehovah God.” ‘That Jehovah God descended 
as the Divine Truth, which is the Word, is evident in John, where 
are these words: “In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word 
was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by 
Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. 
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (i.1, 3, 14). 
By the Word the Divine Truth is meant. ‘That the Lord in the 
world was the Divine truth is plain from His own words: “I am 
the Way, the Truth, and the life’ (John xiv.6). Also from these 
words: “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us 
an understanding that we may know the truth; and we are in the 
truth, in His Son Jesus Christ. “This is the true God and eternal 
life’ (1 John v. 20). And still further, from His Being called 
the Light, a8 in John i.4, 9; xii.35, 36, 46; ix.5; Luke ii.30-32; 
John iti.19, 21; besides other places. ‘Light’? means the Divine 
truth, T, 85. 


220. That Jehovah God Himself descended and became Man, 
is evident from these passages: ‘Behold, a virgin shall conceive, 
and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel” (Isaiah 
vii. 14) ; “Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the 
government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be 
called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting 
Father, The Prince of Peace’ (Isaiah ix.6); “The voice of him 
that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Jehovah, 
make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (Isaiah x1.3) ; 
“Behold, the Lord God will come with strong hand, and His arm 
shall rule for Him; behold, His reward is with Him. He shall 
feed His flock like a shepherd” (Isaiah xl.10, 11); “Behold, the 
days come, saith Jehovah, that I will raise unto David a righteous 
Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute 
judgment and righteousness in the earth. And this is His name 
whereby He shall be called, Jehovah our Righteousness” (Jeremiah 
cir, 0). eel 9od. 


221. Since it was God who descended, and since He is order 
itself, it was necessary, if He was to become man actually, that He 


240 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


should be conceived, carried in the womb, born, educated, acquire 
knowledges gradually, and thereby be introduced into intelligence 
and wisdom. For this reason He was in respect to His Human, 
an infant like other infants, a boy like other boys, and so on; with 
the sole difference that this development was accomplished in Him 
more quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than in others. “That 
this development was in accordance with order is evident from these 
words in Luke: “And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit. 
And He advanced in wisdom, and in stages of life, and in favor 
with God and man” (ii.40, 52). That this was done more 
quickly, more fully, and more perfectly than with others is evident 
from what is said of Him in the same Gospel, that when He was 
twelve years old He sat in the temple in the midst of the doctors 
and taught them, and that all who heard Him were astonished at 
His understanding and answers (ii.46, 47; and iv.16-22, 32). 
T.89. 


222. The Lord from eternity,t Who is Jehovah, came into 
the world to subdue the hells and to glorify His Humanity. With- 
out Him no mortal could have been saved; and they are saved 
who believe in Him. T.2. : 

He descended and assumed a human nature, to the end that He 
might reduce to order all things which were in heaven, and all 
things which were in hell, and all things which were in the church; 
because at that time the power of hell prevailed over the power of 
heaven, and upon earth the power of evil over the power of good, 
and thence a total damnation stood at the door and threatened. 
‘This impending damnation Jehovah God removed by means of His 
Humanity, which was Divine truth, and thus He redeemed angels 
and men; and afterward He united in His Humanity Divine truth 
with Divine good or Divine wisdom with Divine love, and thus to- 
gether with ” and in the glorified Human returned into His Divine, 
in which He was from eternity. “hese things are meant by this 
passage in John: “The Word was with God, and the Word was 
God: and the Word became flesh” (i.1, 14); and in the same, “I 
came forth from the Father, and have come into the world: again 
I leave the world, and go to the Father” (xvi.28); and also by 
this, “We know that the Son of God hath come, and given us an 
understanding, that we may know Him that is true; and we are 
in Him that is true, in His Son Jesus Christ: This is the true God 
and eternal life” (1 John v.20). From these passages it is mani- 
fest that without the coming of the Lord into the world, no one 


STANDARD PASSAGES 241 


could have been saved. It is similar at this day; wherefore, unless 
the Lord come again into the world, in Divine truth, which is 
the Word, no one can be saved. T.3. 


*This phrase carries in it the thought of the pre-incarnation Divine 
Humanity. See nn.217, 218. 
The Humanity was not used and left; see § 128. 


223. There are several reasons, . . . why God could not 
redeem men, that is, deliver them from damnation and hell, except 
by an assumed human nature. For redemption was the subjuga- 
tion of the hells and the ordering of the heavens, and after this 
the establishment of a church. ‘These things God in His omni- 
potence could effect only by means of a human nature; as no one 
can work unless he has an arm. His Humanity is called “the arm 
of Jehovah” in the Word (Isaiah xl.10; liii.1); as one can 
attack a fortified city and destroy the shrines of the idols in it, 
only by means of arms. That in this Divine work God had omni- 
potence by means of His Humanity is manifest also from the 
Word. Otherwise God, Who is in what is inmost and purest, 
could pass to no purpose to what is outmost, in which are the hells 
and in which the men of that time were—comparatively as the 
soul cannot do anything without a body, or as one cannot conquer 
enemies who do not come into his sight, or whom he cannot ap- 
proach and reach with any arms, like spears, shields, or muskets. 
It was as impossible for God to accomplish the work of redemp- 
tion without the Humanity as it would be for one to subjugate 
the Indies without transporting soldiers there in ships; or as it 
would be to make trees grow with the sun’s heat and light only, if 
no air were created through which the heat and light might pass, 
or no earth, out of which they might spring; as impossible, in fact, 
as to cast nets into the air and catch fishes there, instead of in the 
water. For, as He is in Himself, Jehovah in His omnipotence 
cannot touch any devil in hell nor any devil upon earth, and curb 
him and his fury, and subdue his violence, unless He be in things 
last as He is in things first. He is in things last in His Humanity. 
Therefore, He is called “the First and the Last,” “the Alpha and 
the Omega,” “the Beginning and the End.” ‘T.84. 


224. Whoever knows what the nature of hell is, and how it had 
arisen at the time of the Lord’s coming, and overflowed the whole 
world of spirits (into which those enter who pass by death from 
this world), and with what power the Lord cast hell down and 
put it to flight, and afterwards reduced it (and heaven) to order, 


242 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


cannot but stand in amazement, and exclaim, that all was a 
purely Divine work. 

By the same Divine power the Lord fights at this day against 
hell in every man who is being regenerated; for hell rises up 
against every one then with diabolical fury; to which, unless the 
Lord opposed and subdued it, man could not but succumb. T.123. 


225. The Lord came into the world to save the human race 
which would otherwise have perished in eternal death. ‘This sal- 
vation the Lord effectéd by subjugating the hells, which infested 
every man coming into the world and going out of the world, and 
by glorifying His Humanity; for so He can hold the hells sub- 
dued to eternity. The subjugation of the hells, and the glorifica- 
tion at the same time of His Humanity, were effected by tempta- 
tions let into the Humanity He had from the mother, and by 
unbroken victories. His passion on the cross was the last tempta- 
tion and complete victory. N.293. 


226. Redemption itself was the subjugation of the hells, the 
establishment of order in the heavens, and thereby a preparation 
for a new spiritual church. ‘That these three are redemption, I 
can say with all certainty, since the Lord is also at this day per- 
forming a redemption, which He commenced in the year 1757, 
together with the last judgment* which was then performed. 
‘This redemption has continued from that time even to this.? The 
reason is, that the Second Coming of the Lord is at this time, and 
a new church is to be instituted, which cannot be done unless the 
subjugation of the hells, and the establishment of order in the 
heavens precede. And because it was granted me to see all things, 
I can describe how the hells were subjugated, and how the new 
heaven was founded and put in order. ‘The subjugation of the 
hells, the establishment of order in the heavens and the establish- 
ment of a new church were redemption, because without these no 
man could have been saved. “I.115. 


* There is a “last judgment” on each religious era (see § 42); the term 
does not mean that judgments are at an end. 
*“True Christian Religion” was published in 1771. 


227. The first stage of the redemption accomplished by the 
Lord was the separation of the evil from the good, the elevation of 
the good to Himself into heaven, and the removal of the evil from 
Himself into hell. This first stage was a last judgment. ‘The 
second stage of redemption was the co-ordination of all things in 
the heavens, and, the subordination of all things in hell, a still 


STANDARD PASSAGES 243 


more distinct separation and freeing of the good from the evil. 
This amounted to a new heaven: and a new hell. The third act 
of redemption was a revelation of truths out of the new heaven, 
and by this means the erection and establishment on earth of a 
new spiritual church. This was-a yet further separation and free- 
ing of the good from the evil, for the future as well as at the 
time. Coronis, 21. 


228. The human with every man commences in the inmost ? 
of his rational + being; so also with the Lord’s humanity. What 
was above that was Jehovah Himself, differently from every other 


man. A.2194. 


*On these terms see §§ 5 and 6 and excerpts. What is asserted, in 
this passage, is the completeness and genuineness of the Lord’s human 
nature, as well as His unique relation to the Divine. 


229. It is known that the Lord was born like another man, 
and that when an infant, He learned to speak as an infant does, 
and that He grew in knowledge, and in intelligence and wisdom. 
Hence it is evident, that His humanity was not Divine from birth, 
but that He made it Divine by His own proper ability. It was 
done by His own proper ability because He was conceived by 
Jehovah. ‘Thence the inmost essence of His life was Jehovah 
Himself. For the inmost of the life of every man, called the soul, 
is from the father, but what that inmost puts on, which is called 
body, is from the mother. “The inmost essence of life, which is 
from the father, is continually flowing in and acting on the ex- 
ternal, which is from the mother, and endeavoring to make this 
like to itself, even in the womb, as may be plain from sons, in that 
they are born to the natural inclinations of the father, and in some 
cases grandsons and great-grandsons to the natural inclinations of 
the grandfather and great-grandfather. “The ground and reason 
of this is that the soul, which is from the father, continually wills 
to make the external, which is from the mother, like to itself, and 
an image of itself. Since this is the case with the human being, 
it may be manifest that it was especially the case with the Lord. 
His inmost essence was the Divine itself, because it was Jehovah 
Himself. For He was His only-begotten Son. And inasmuch as 
the inmost was the Divine itself, could not this, more than in the 
case of any man, make the external, which was from the mother, 
an image of itself, that is, like to itself, thus make the humanity, 
which was external, and from the mother, divine? And this by his 
own proper ability, because the Divine, which was inmost, from 
which He acted into the humanity, was His, as the soul of man, 


244 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


which is inmost, is man’s. And whereas the Lord advanced ac- 
cording to Divine order, He made His human nature, when He 
was in the world, to be Divine truth;! but afterwards, when He 
was fully glorified, He made it to be Divine good,* thus one with 
Jehovah. A.6716. 


1On the force of these terms see Excerpt n.145, note. 


230. It would not have been possible for hell to approach to 
the Lord if He had been born Divine, that is, without an ad- 
herence of evil from the mother. It is a general formula with 
preachers that the Lord also bore the iniquities and evils of man- 
kind; but it was impossible for Him to take iniquities and evils 
on Himself, except by way of heredity. The Divine is not sus- 
ceptible of evil. “To overcome evil, therefore, by His own powers 
—which no man ever could, or can do—and to become the One 
Righteousness, He willed to be born like another man. 

Otherwise, there would have been no need that He should be 
born. But in order that He might also put on evil, to fight 
against it and conquer it, and might thus join together in Himself 
the Divine Essence and the Human Essence, He came into the 
world. 

The Lord, however, had no actual evil, or evil that was His 
own; as He Himself declares in John: “Which of you convinceth 


Me of sin?” (viii.46). A.1573. 
231. This Divine Truth, which also is the Word, was in the 


Lord by birth from conception. Afterwards it was increased be- 
yond all measure, that is, infinitely; which is meant by the Spirit 
of Jehovah imparted to Him. Can. “Redeemer,” iv.3. 


232. ‘The body of Christ, so far? as it was from the substance 
of the mother, was not life in itself, but a recipient of life from 
the Divine in Him, which was Life in itself. Can. “Redeemer,” 
eo 


1Note the implication. 


233. The Lord consecutively put off the human nature assumed 
from the mother, and put on a Humanity from the Divine in 
Himself, which is the Divine Humanity and the Son of God. 
15235: 


234. It is to be known, that the Lord successively and contin- 
ually, even to the last period of His life in the world, when He 
was glorified, separated from Himself, and put off that which was 


STANDARD PASSAGES 245 


merely human, viz., what He derived from the mother, till at 
length He was no longer her son, but the son of God, in point of 
birth as well as conception, and thus became one with the Father, 
and Himself Jehovah. That He separated from Himself and put 
off all the human which He had from the mother, so that He was 
no longer her son, appears plain from the Lord’s words in John: 
“When they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, they 
have no wine; Jesus said unto her, What is there to Me and to 
thee, woman?” (ii.3, 4); and in Matthew, “Then said one unto 
Him, Behold Thy mother, and Thy brethren stand without, seek- 
ing to speak to Thee; but Jesus answering said to him that had 
told him, Who is My mother and who are My brethren? and 
stretching forth His hand over His disciples He said, Behold My 
mother, and My brethren; for whosoever shall do the will of My 
Father, Who is in the heavens, the same is My brother, and 
sister and mother” (xii.47-49; Mark iti.32-35; Luke viii.20, 21). 
A.2649. 


235. When the Lord had fully glorified His Humanity, He 
then put off the humanity derived from the mother, and put on a 
humanity derived from the Father, which is the Divine Humanity; 
wherefore, He was then no longer the son of Mary. N.295. 


236. Now, because the Lord had at first a human nature from 
the mother, and put this off successively, therefore while He was 
in the world He had two states, which are called the state of 
humiliation or of exinanition, and the state of glorification or of 
union with the Divine which is called the Father,—the state of 
humiliation so far as and when He was in the human from the 
mother, and the state of glorification so far as and when He was 
in the Human from the Father. In the state of humiliation He 
prayed to the Father, as to one other than Himself; but in the 
state of glorification He spoke with the Father as with Himself. 
In the latter state, He said that the Father and He were one; 
but in the state of humiliation He underwent temptations, and 
suffered the cross, and prayed that the Father might not forsake 
Him: for the Divine could not be tempted, and still less suffer 
the cross. L.35. 


237. The progress to union was the state of His exinanition, 
and the union itself is the state of His glorification. “That the 
Lord, while He was in the world, was in two states, which are 
called states of exinanition and of glorification, is known in the 
church; the former state, which was that of exinanition, is de- 


246 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


scribed in many passages in the Word, especially in the Psalms of 
David, and also in the prophets, and particularly in Isaiah (liii.), 
where it is said, that ‘“‘He poured out His soul unto death” (v.12). 
‘This same state was the state of His humiliation before the Father, 
for in it He prays to the Father and says that He does His will, 
and ascribes to the Father what He has done or said. ‘That He 
prayed to the Father is evident from many passages (Matthew 
xxvi.39, 41; Mark 1.35; vi.46;-xiv.32-39; Luke-v.16; vi. 12; 
xxil.41-44; John xvii.9, 15, 20); and that He did the will of 
the Father (John iv.34; v.30); and that He ascribed to the 
Father all that He did and said (John viii.26-29; xii.49, 50; 
xiv. 10). Yea, upon the cross He cried out, “My God, My God, 
why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew xxvii.46; Mark xv.34). 
Moreover, without this state He could not have been crucified. 
The state of glorification is also the state of union. He was in 
this state when He was transfigured before His three disciples, 
and when He did miracles, and whenever He said that the Father 
and He were one; that the Father was in Him, and He in the 
Father; that all things of the Father were His; and when the 
union was full, that He had power over all flesh (John xvii.2) ; 
and all power in heaven and in earth (Matthew xxviii.18) ; and 
more to the same effect. “T.104. 


238. The Lord by the most grievous temptation-combats re- 
duced all things in Himself to Divine order, insomuch that there 
remained nothing at all of the human which He had derived from 
the mother; so that He was not merely made new as other men 
.are but was made wholly Divine. For a man who has been made 
new by regeneration still retains in himself an inclination to evil, 
and even evil itself; but he is withheld from evil by an influx of 
the life of the Lord’s love, and this with all power; whereas the 
Lord cast out all the evil that He had inherited from the mother, 
and made Himself Divine even as to truths, which are the ves- 


Selo: Ago lo: 
* Of life, or of good. 


239. The union itself was fully effected through the passion of 
the cross, because that was the last temptation which the Lord 
suffered in the world; and conjunction is effected by temptations. 
For in temptations a man, in appearance, is left to himself alone; 
and yet he is not so left, for God is then most present in his 
inmost being, and supports him. When, therefore, any one con- 
quers in temptation, he is in inmost conjunction with God: and 


STANDARD PASSAGES 247 


the Lord was then in inmost union with God His Father. That 
in the passion of the cross the Lord was left to Himself, is evi- 
dent from His exclamation upon the cross: “My God, My God, 
why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Matthew xxvii.46); and also 
from these words of the Lord: “No man taketh My life from 
Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, 
and I have power to take it again. “This commandment have I 
received of My Father’ (John x.18). . . . Then an inmost 
and thus the complete union was effected. TI. 126. 


240. It is plain, therefore, why the Lord came into the world, 
and put on the human state itself, with its infirmity. Thus He 
could be tempted as to the human, and through temptations could 
subjugate the hells, and reduce each and all things to obedience 
and into order, and save the human race, which had removed itself 
so far from the Supreme Divine. A.2795. 


241. The union of the Lord’s Human Essence with His Divine 
Essence was not effected at once, but in the whole course of His 
life, from infancy to the last period of His life in the world. 
Thus He ascended continually to glorification, that is, to union; 
which is what we read in John: “Jesus said, Father, glorify Thy 
name. ‘Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I both have 


glorified it, and will glorify it again,’ (xii.28). A.2033. 


242. "That the union is reciprocal is very evident from these 
passages in the Word: “Philip, believest thou not that I am in 
the Father, and the Father in Me? Believe Me that I am in the 
Father, and the Father in Me” (John, xiv.10, 11) ; “That ye may 
know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” 
(x.38) ; “That they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, 
and I in Thee” (xvii.21); ‘Father, all Mine are Thine, and 
Thine are Mine” (xvii.10). ‘The union is reciprocal because no 
union or conjunction between two is given, unless on the part of 
each they accede one to the other. T’.99, 


243. The Lord rose from the dead not only as to His spirit 
but as to His body, because He glorified His whole Humanity 
while He was in the world, that is, made it Divine. For the 
soul which He had from the Father was in itself absolutely 
Divine, and the Body being finally made a likeness to the Soul, 
that is, of the Father, also became Divine. Hence it is that He, 
unlike any other man, rose again both as to soul and body. ‘This 
He made manifest, too, to His disciples (who when they saw Him 


248 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


thought they saw a spirit) by saying: “See My hands and My feet, 
that it is I myself; handle Me, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh 
and bones as ye see Me have” (Luke xxiv.31-39), indicating by 
this that He was Man both as to His Spirit and in respect to His 
body. H.316. 


244. While the Lord was in the world He had foresight and 
providence, in His humanity, but from the Divine. But after- 
wards, when He was glorified, He had these solely from the 
Divine; for the Human glorified is Divine. The human regarded 
in itself, is merely a form receptive of life from the Divine; but 
the Lord’s glorified Human, or His Divine Human, is not a form 
receptive of life from the Divine, but is the very being of life; 
and what proceeds from it is life. A.5256. 


245. -(Before the incarnation) the Divine Human was the 
essential Divine as it is in heaven, or in the Greatest Man,! and 
was Jehovah Himself clothed in this way with the Human. But 
when the human race had become such that the Essential Divine, 
so clothed as to be the Divine Human in heaven, could no longer 
effectively influence men, that is, when Jehovah could no longer 
reach man because man had so far removed himself, then Jehovah, 
Who is the Lord in respect to the essential Divine, came down and 
took upon Himself a human which was by conception Divine, while 
by its birth from a virgin it was such as is the human of other men. 
This human He put away, and by Divine means made the human 
so born to be Divine; and from this all holiness proceeds. “Thus 
the Human came to be Essence in Itself, which fills the entire 
heaven, and also enables those to be saved who could not otherwise 
be saved. And this is now the Lord Who as to His Divine 
Human is alone Man, and from Whom man has it that he is man. 


A.3061. 
1See § 43. 


246. Thus God became Man, as in things first so also in things 
last. . . . God from the beginning was Man? in first things, 
though not in last; yet, after He took on the Human in the world, 
He became Man in ultimates also. From this it is that the Lord 
is called ‘the Beginning and the End,” “the First and the Last,” 
“the Alpha and the Omega;” as in the Apocalypse: “I am the 
Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, saith the 


STANDARD PASSAGES 249 


Lord; He Who is, and Who was and Who is to come; the Al- 
mighty” (i.8, 11). John, when he saw the Son of Man in the 
midst of the seven candle-sticks, ‘fell at His feet as dead. But He 
laid His right hand upon him, saying, I am the First and the 
Last” (i.13, 17; ii.8; xxi.6). “Behold, I come quickly, that I 
may give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha 
and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the 
Last” (xxii.12, 13). And in Isaiah: ‘Thus saith Jehovah, the 
King of Israel, and his Redeemer, Jehovah Zebaoth: I am the 
First and the Last” (xliv.6; xlviii.12). L.36. 


* On force of this see § 101. 


247. No one can be conjoined by faith and love to the essential 
Divine apart from the Divine Human. For the essential Divine, 
which is called the Father, cannot be thought about because it is 
incomprehensible; and what cannot be thought about cannot be- 
come an object of faith, nor therefore, an object of love; when 
yet the head of all worship is to believe in God, and to love Him 
above all things. That the essential Divine, which is the Father, 
is incomprehensible, the Lord teaches in John: “No one hath seen 
God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the 
Father, He hath declared Him” (i.18). “Ye have not heard the 
voice of the Father at any time, nor seen His shape” (v.37). And 
that the Divine itself which is the ‘Father’ is comprehensible in the 
Lord through His Divine Human, He again teaches in these 
passages: ‘‘He that seeth Me, seeth Him Who sent Me” (John 
xii.45) ; “If ye have known Me, ye have known My Father also; 
and henceforth ye have known Him, and have seen Him. He that 
seeth Me, seeth the Father” (John xiv.6-11); “All things have 
been delivered unto Me of My Father; and no one knoweth the 
Son, save the Father; neither doth any one know the Father save 
the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him” (Matthew 
xi.27, Luke x.22). A.10067. 


248. ‘The state of the church was completely changed by the 
Lord’s becoming the Word in ultimates. All the churches which 
had been before His advent, were representative + churches, and 
could see Divine truth in the shade? only; but after Lord’s 
coming into the world a church was instituted by Him which saw 
Divine truth in the light.t. The difference is like that between 
evening and morning, and the state of the church before His ad- 
vent is indeed called “the evening” and that of the church after 
it “the morning.” Before His coming into the world the Lord 


250 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


was present, of course, with the men of the church, but mediately 
through heaven, whereas since His coming into the world He is 
present with them immediately, for in the world He put on the 
Divine Natural,? in which He is present with men. The Lord’s 
“glorification” is the glorification of the human nature which He 
assumed in the world, and the glorified human nature is the Divine 


Natural. S.99. 


*The spiritual life had been grasped under some type, picturing it; 
now it could be looked at directly. 
*See Excerpt n.218. 


249. There is a trine in the Lord: the Divine itself which is 
called the Father, the Divine Human called the Son, and the 
Divine going forth called the Holy Spirit, as may be seen from the 
Word, from the Divine essence, and from heaven. From the 
W ord :—TVhere the Lord Himself teaches that the Father and He 
are one, and that the Holy Spirit goes forth from Him and from 
the Father; also that the Father is in Him and He in the Father, 
and that the Spirit of Truth, which is the Holy Spirit, does not 
speak from Himself but from the Lord; and again, there are 
passages in the Old Word where the Lord is called “Jehovah,” 
“Son of God,” and “the Holy One of Israel.” From the Divine 
Essence :—One Divine by itself is not possible, but there must be 
a trine.2 This trine is being, manifesting, and going forth, for 
being must necessarily show itself, and when it has shown itself, 
go forth so as to have effect. “This trine is one in essence and in 
person, and is God. ‘This may be illustrated by a comparison. An 
angel of heaven is trinal and thus one; the being of an angel is 
what is called his soul, his appearing* is what is called his body, 
and the going forth from both is what is called the sphere of his 
life, without which an angel has neither existence nor being. By 
this trine an angel is an image of God, and is called a “son of 
God,” and also an “heir,” and even a “god;’ nevertheless, an angel 
is not life from himself, but is a recipient of life; God alone is 
life from Himself. From Heaven:—The Divine trine, which 
is one in essence and in person, is such in heaven. ‘The Divine 
called the Father, and the Divine Human called the Son, appear 
in heaven before the angels as a sun, and the Divine that goes 
forth therefrom appears as light united to heat; the light is Divine 
truth, and the heat is Divine good. ‘Thus the Divine called the 
Father is the Divine “being,” the Divine Human called the Son 
is the Divine “manifestation” from that “being” and the Divine 
called the Holy Spirit is the Divine going forth from the Divine 


STANDARD PASSAGES 251 


manifestation and from the Divine being. ‘This trine is the Lord 
in heaven; His Divine love is what appears there as asun. E.1111. 


*Swedenborg’s word here means the phenomenal side of being—the 
coming to notice, even to one’s own awareness. 

* Nothing could make plainer that the Trinity always was, and is not 
simply a trinity of ways in which God came to show Himself (§ 132). 


250. By the Holy Spirit strictly the Divine Truth? is meant, 
thus also the Word; and in this sense the Lord Himself is also the 
Holy Spirit. But because in the church at this day the Divine 
operation which is actual justification is described by the Holy 
Spirit, therefore this is here assumed ? as the Holy Spirit; and of 
this chiefly we speak for the reason, also, that the Divine Opera- 
tion is effected by the Divine truth which proceeds out of the Lord; 
and that which proceeds is of one and the same essence with Him 
from Whom it proceeds, like these three, soul, body, and proceeding 
power, which together make one essence; with man, merely 
human, but with the Lord, Divine and Human also; these after the 
glorification being united together, like what precedes with what 
follows, and like essence with its form. ‘Thus the three essentials,° 
which are called “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit,” in the Lord 
are one. The Lord is the Divine Truth itself, or Divine Verity; 
the Holy Spirit is also the same. T°.139. 


* On the meaning of this term see n.145, note, again. 

? Swedenborg accommodates himself to the easier conception of the Holy 
Spirit. 

®° This term the teaching employs in place of the old theological term 
‘persons, which had come to mean “beings” or “individuals.” No term 
is adequate for description of the members of the Trinity, which are not 
neuter as the term “essentials” is, or non-personal. 


251. ‘Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, If any man thirst, 
let him come unto Me, and drink. He that believeth on Me, as 
the Scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living 
water. This He said of the spirit which they that believe on Him 
were to receive; the Holy Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was 
not yet glorified” (John vii.37-39). 

It is clear from this that the Holy Spirit is Divine truth going 
forth from the Lord, which flows in with man, both immediately 
from the Lord Himself and mediately through angels and spirits; 
for the Lord says first, that “he who believes on Him, out of his 
belly shall flow rivers of living water,” and then that “He spake 
this of the spirit which they were to receive;” for “water,” in the 
spiritual sense, signifies truth, and “rivers of living water,’ Divine 
truth from the Lord in abundance; the same is therefore meant by 


252 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


“the spirit which they were to receive.’ And as Divine truth 
goes forth from the glorified Human of the Lord, and not im- 
mediately from His Divine itself, for this in itself was glorified 
from eternity, so it is here said, “The Holy Spirit was not yet, 
because Jesus was not glorified.” ‘To “glorify” is to make Divine, 
and the Lord fully glorified His Human, that is, made it Divine 
by His last temptation and victory on the cross. E.183. 


252. The Spirit of God and the Holy Spirit are two distinct 
things.t The Spirit of God neither did nor could operate on man 
except imperceptibly; whereas the Holy Spirit, which proceeds 
solely from the Lord, operates on man perceptibly and enables him 
to comprehend spiritual truths in a natural manner; for the Lord 
has united the Divine Natural to the Divine Celestial and the 
Divine Spiritual, and He operates from these two through that. 
Besides, ‘“Holy” in the Word is predicated solely of Divine truth, 
thus of the Lord, Who is Divine truth not only in the celestial and 
spiritual but also in the natural sense; and therefore it is said in 
the Revelation that the Lord alone is holy (xv.3, 4). See also 
R.173. It is also said in John: “The Holy Spirit was not yet, 
because Jesus was not yet glorified” (vii.39). Q.5 

*Each is the Divine in the act of proceeding, but the Spirit of God is 


that Divine proceeding as before the Incarnation, the Holy Spirit the 
fuller Divine influence after Incarnation, 


253. The Divine virtue and activity meant by the Holy Spirit 
are in general reformation and regeneration, and according to these 
renewal, vivification, sanctification and justification, and in turn 
according to these, purification from evils, and forgiveness of sins, 
and finally salvation. ‘These are, in their order, the virtues which 
the Lord + operates in those who believe in Him, and who accom- 
modate and dispose themselves for His reception and abode; and 
this is done by means of Divine truth, and with Christians by 
means of the Word; for this is the only medium through which 
man draws near to the Lord, and into which the Lord enters; for, 
as was said above, the Lord is the Divine Truth itself, and what- 
soever proceeds from Him is Divine truth. But the Divine truth 
from good is to be understood, which is the same with faith from 
charity; for faith is no other than truth, and charity is no other 
than goodness. By means of Divine truth from good, that is, by 
means of faith from charity, man is reformed and regenerated; 
also renewed, vivified, sanctified, justified; and, according to the 
progress and increase of these, is purified from evils; and purifica- 
tion from evils is remission of sins. It should be known that 


STANDARD PASSAGES 253 


the Lord is continually operating those saving graces with every 
man, for they are steps to heaven, for the Lord wills the salvation 
of all; wherefore the salvation of all is His end, and he who wills 
an end will the means. His coming, redemption, and the passion 
of the cross, were for the sake of the salvation of men (Matthew 
xvili.11; Luke xix.10); and, because the salvation of men was 
and for ever is His end, it follows that the above-mentioned opera- 
tions are mediate ends, and to save is the ultimate end. T.142. 


1The Lord, as His is the Holy Spirit. 


254. With the clergy this Divine virtue and activity (meant by 
the sending of the Holy Spirit) is especially enlightenment and 
instruction. “The Lord’s activities in reformation and regeneration 
flow in from Him with the clergy as well as with the laity, and are 
received by those who are in the Lord, and the Lord in them (John 
vi. 56; xiv.20; xv.4,5). Of the activities of the Holy Spirit with 
the clergy especially, there are four: Enlightenment, Perception, 
Disposition, and Instruction. Enlightenment is from the Lord. 
Perception is with the man according to the state of his mind 
formed by doctrines; if these are true the perception becomes clear 
from the light which enlightens, but if they are false the perception 
becomes obscure, which may yet appear as if clear from confirma- 
tions; but this is from illusive light which to merely natural sight 
is like clearness. Disposition, however, is from the affection of 
the love of the will; the enjoyment from this love disposes; if the 
enjoyment is from the love of evil and hence of falsity, it excites 
a zeal which outwardly is stern, rough, burning, and flaming, 
while inwardly it is anger, rage, and unmercifulness; but if it be 
from love of good and thence of truth, it is outwardly mild, 
smooth, thundering, and flashing, and inwardly it is charity, grace, 
and mercy. Instruction follows as an effect from the preceding 
as causes. “hese Divine activities belong to the office of minister, 
and inauguration into the ministry brings them with it; but en- 
lightenment from the Lord is turned into various lights and heats 
with every one, according to the state of his mind. T’.146, 155. 


255. We have treated of God the Creator, and at the same 
time we treated also of Creation; then of the Lord the Redeemer, 
and at the same time of Redemption; and lastly of the Holy Spirit, 
and at the same time of the Divine Operation. And having thus 
treated of the Triune God, it is necessary to treat also of the 
Divine ‘Trinity, which is known in the Christian world, and yet 
is unknown. For by this alone can a just idea of God be obtained ; 


254 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


and a just idea of God is, in the church, like the shrine and the 
altar in a temple, and like a crown on the head and a sceptre in 
the hand of a king on his throne; for on a just ideat of God 
depends the whole body of theology, as a chain depends on its first 
link. And, if you will believe it, every one is allotted his piace in 
the heavens according to his idea of God; for that is, as it were, 
the touchstone by which are tested the gold and silver, that 1s, 
good and truth, as to their quality with man: for there is with 
him no saving good except from God, nor is there any truth which 
does not derive its quality from the bosom of good. T.163. 


*See back at § 95. 


256. That there is a Divine Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy 
Spirit, is very evident from the Word, and from these things there: 
“The angel Gabriel said unto Mary, The Holy Spirit shall come 
upon thee, and the Power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; 
therefore also that Holy hing which shall be born of thee, shall 
be called The Son of God” (Luke i.35). Here three are named, 
the Highest Who is God the Father, the Holy Spirit, and the 
Son of God. When Jesus was baptized, “Lo, the heavens were 
opened, and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, 
and lighting upon Him: and lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This 
is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased” (Matthew iii. 16, 
17; Mark i.10, 11; John i.32). And still more plainly from 
these words of the Lord to the disciples: ‘Go ye, make disciples 
of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and 
of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew xxviii.19); and 
moreover from these words? in 1 John v.7: ‘There are three 
that bear record in heaven, The Father, the Word, and the Holy 
Spirit.” And further, that the Lord prayed to His Father, and 
spoke of Him and with Him, and said that He would send the 
Holy Spirit, and also did send Him. Finally, that the apostles 
in their epistles frequently named the Father, and the Son, and 
the Holy Spirit. From these things it is manifest that there is a 
Divine Trinity, which is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I. 164. 


1'These words are not in the earliest MSS of the New Testament. 


257. A Divine Trinity in one Person is to be understood as 
soul, body, and proceeding activity,’ together constituting one 
essence, for the one is from the other, and therefore the one 
belongs to the other. In this sense there is a trinity in each man, 
which taken together constitutes one person, to wit, the soul, the 
body, and the activity that goes forth. But in man this trinity is 


STANDARD PASSAGES 255 


finite, because man is only an organ of life; whereas in the Lord 
the Trinity is infinite and thus Divine, because the Lord is life 
itself even in respect to the Human, as He Himself teaches in 
John v.26; xiv.6; and also elsewhere. Q.3. 


*This illustration lights up the way in which the members of the 
Trinity are related among themselves. It does not mean to say that one 
is soul, another body, etc. See Excerpt 259, where this is plainer. 


258. The idea of three essentials existing in one person is at- 
tained when the Father is thought of as being in the Lord, and the 
Holy Spirit as proceeding from Him. There is then perceived to be 
a trinity in the Lord: namely, the Divine Itself, which is the 
Father; the Divine Humanity, which is the Son; and the Divine 
Proceeding, which is the Holy Spirit. N.290. 


259. In the Lord (Jesus Christ) are the Divine “Being” to 
which the soul in man corresponds; the Divine Human to which 
the body corresponds; and the proceeding Divine (Holy Spirit) 
to which the activity corresponds. This trine is a one. R.961(3). 


260. There is a trinity in God and there is also a unity. That 
there is a trinity is evident from the passages, in the Word where 
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mentioned; and that there 
is a unity, from the passages in the Word where it is said that 
God is one. The unity in which there is a trinity, or the one God 
in Whom there is a trine, does not exist in the Divine that is called 
the Father, nor in the Divine that is called the Holy Spirit, but 
in the Lord alone. In the Lord alone there is a trine, namely 
the Divine which is called the Father, the Divine Human which 
is called the Son, and the Divine going forth which is the Holy 
Spirit; and this trine is one because it is in one person, and may 


be called a triune. E.1106. 


261. In all things, in the spiritual world and in the natural, 
there is the semblance of a marriage. The image of marriage exists 
where there is what is active and what is passive. And there must 
be what is active and what is passive where anything at all exists, 
for without the conjunction of the two nothing can ever be pro- 
duced. There is an image of marriage in all things, because all 
things relate to good and truth, thus to the heavenly marriage, 
which is of good and truth; and the heavenly marriage in turn 
relates to the Divine marriage, which is one of Divine good and 
Divine truth. And as nothing can exist or be produced unless 
there is what is active and what is passive, thus, unless there is 
an image of marriage, it is very plain that truth which belongs 


256 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


to faith without the good which belongs to charity can produce 
nothing, nor that good without that truth; there must be a union 
of the two to produce fruit, and to make the life of heaven in 


the human being. A.7022. 


262. For those who desire true marriage love the Lord provides 
like partners. If they are not given on earth, He provides them 
in the heavens. For all marriages of a true marriage love are the 
provision of the Lord. I have heard the angels describe how they 
are provided in the heavens, thus: —That the Divine Providence of 
the Lord with regard to marriages and in a marriage is most 
minute and most universal. “For from the delights of marriage love 
all the delights of heaven stream forth like sweet waters from the 
flow of a fountain. ‘Therefore it is provided that marriage partners 
be born, and that they be educated constantly under the Lord’s 
auspices for marriage, the boy and the girl not knowing it. When 
the time is ready, she, the virgin then marriageable, and he, the 
youth, then ready for marriage, meet somewhere as if by fate, see 
each other, and then instantly, as from a certain instinct, know 
that they are mates, and as if from a kind of dictate they think 
within themselves, the youth, ‘She is mine,” and the virgin, “He 
is mine.” When this thought has been seated for some time in the 
mind of each, they deliberately speak to each other, and betroth 
themselves. It is said, as if by fate, instinct, and dictate, though 
the meaning is by Providence, because so long as Providence is 
unappreciated it thus appears; for the Lord opens their inward 
kinship so that they may see each other. M.229. 


263. ‘True marriage love is chastity itself. “The reasons are: 
(1) It is from the Lord, and answers to the marriage of the Lord 
and the church. (2) It issues from the marriage of good and 
truth. (3) It is spiritual, in the measure the church is with one. 
(4) It is the fundamental love, and the head of all loves, spiritual 
and celestial. (5) It is the true seminary of the human race, and 
thus of the angelic heaven. (6) It therefore exists among the 
angels of heaven, too, and with them spiritual offspring are born 
of it, which are growths in love and wisdom. (7) Its service is 
therefore pre-eminent above the other uses of creation. So it 
follows that true marriage love, viewed in the light of its origin, 
and looked at in its essence, is pure and holy, so that it may be 
called purity and holiness, and therefore chastity itself. M.143. 


264. The Word is the medium of the Lord’s union with the 


human being, and of man’s with the Lord. For in its essence it is 


STANDARD PASSAGES 257 


Divine truth joined with Divine good, and Divine good joined 
with Divine truth. This union is in each and all things of the 
Word, in its celestial and in its spiritual sense. From this it 
follows that the Word is the perfect marriage of good and truth, 
and because it is from the Lord, and what is from Him is in truth 
He, it results that when a man reads the Word and takes truth 
from it the Lord adds goods. For good which affects, a man 
does not see, for he reads from the understanding, and the under- 
standing takes from it only its own things, which are truths. “The 
understanding feels, from the delight which flows in when it is 
enlightened, that good is added to the truths. This takes place 
inwardly in those only who read to the end that they may acquire 
wisdom, and that end exists with those who wish to learn of the 
genuine truths there, and by means of these to form the church in 
themselves. Those, however, who only read for the glamour of 
erudition, and those who read with the notion that mere reading 
or hearing inspires faith and conduces to salvation, do not receive 
any good from the Lord. For the thought of these readers is to 
be saved by the mere words, in which is nothing of truth, and the 
purpose of the others to be eminent for their learning—a purpose 
with which no spiritual good can be united, but only the natural 
delight which comes of worldly glory. Because it is a medium 
of conjunction the Word is called the covenant, Old, and New; 
‘covenant’ meaning ‘conjunction.’ M.128. 


265. The Divine love and the Divine wisdom, which are a 
unity in the Lord, and which go forth as a unity from Him, are 
in a certain image in everything made by Him. Something shall be 
said specifically about that unity or union which is called the 
marriage of good and truth. ‘That marriage is (1) In the Lord 
Himself; for Divine love and Divine wisdom are a unity in Him. 
(2) It is from the Lord. In everything which goes forth from 
Him love and wisdom are fully united, the two going forth from 
Him as a Sun, the Divine love as heat, and the Divine wisdom as 
light. (3) The two are received by the angels, indeed, as two, 
but are made a unity in them by the Lord; the same is true of 
men of the church. (4) Because of this influx of love and wisdom 
from the Lord as a unity into angels of heaven and men of the 
church, the Lord is called “Bridegroom” and ‘Husband’ in the 
Word, and the heaven and the Church “Bride” and “Wife.” 
(5) As far, therefore, as heaven and the church in general or an 
angel of heaven and a man of the church individually are in that 
union, I.e., in the marriage of good and truth, they are an image 


258 AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


and likeness of the Lord, for good and truth are a unity in the 
Lord, and in fact are the Lord. (6) In heaven and in the church 
in general, or in an angel of heaven or a man of the church, love 
and wisdom are a unity when will and understanding, and thus 
good and truth make a unity, or what is the same when charity 
and faith make one, or, what is still the same, when doctrine from 
the Word and a life according to it make a one. P.8. 


INDEX OF DEFINITION AND COMMENT 


Main topics can be found readily in the Outline with the help 
of paragraph and other headings; and in the Excerpts with the 


help of the Outline. 


This Index confines itself to tracing scattered definition and 


comment. 


A plain number means a paragraph in Part I. A number pre- 
ceded by n. means the Excerpt in Part II. so numbered. A num- 
eral in parentheses means a note to paragraph or excerpt. 


Adulteration, n.153(1). 


Allegorizing not interpretation of 
spiritual sense, 71. 


Apparent truth, 68, 90, n.156(1). 
Appearance spiritual sense in lit- 
eral, n.167 and note; n.168. 


Book of life, 53, n.114. 


Children, hereafter, 58, n.263. 

Church, meaning of term in S, 
n.1(1), n.23(3), 36*, 41, 42, 45; 
“in the church,” “of the church,” 
n.92(1); “representative church,” 
n.248 and note 1. 

Conscience, social, racial, 9, 44. 

Correspondence, meaning, 72e; as 
distinct from ‘representative’ and 
‘significative,’ n.164 and note. 

Creation, science, philosophy and 
religion on, 103. 


Devil (and satan), 54. 

Dictation (of Scripture), 83. 

Distinctness two worlds not sepa- 
rateness, n.5(4). 

Divine good (and Divine truth), 
n.145(1), n.146(1), n.250(1). 


259 


Divine of the Lord, 47, n.7(2). 


Divine truth, n.145(1), n.146(1), 
neZ50 1). 

Doctrine, simple concept, n.187(1). 
n.4(5); old and new way of 


using Scripture for doctrine 
n.189(1). 


Essential (of member of Trinity), 
n.250 and note 3. 


Evil, inherited, actual, 28, n.64. 


External man, 6; relation to natural 
Mane on all a12 14: 


Faith, and charity, n.28(1); and 
knowledge, 16. 

Falsification (adulteration) n.153 
(1). 

lreedom, kinds of moral freedom, 8. 


Genesis i, 34, 103. 


Genuine truth, as_ distinguished 
from apparent, 68, 90, n.156(1). 


Good of faith, good of love, n.60 
(1). 


Immortality, seat of, n.100(1). 
Infant baptism, n.97(1). 


260 


Influx, in giving of Scripture, 83, 
n.179 and note 2, n.181 and 
note. 


Inmost, tract in human constitution, 
5, n.9, n.196 and note, n.190 and 
note; in Lord, 121, n.229. 


Innocence, n.73(1). 


Instinctive beliefs: in God, 96, 
n.195; in immortality, 46. 


Internal historical sense of Scrip- 
ture, 76, n.169 note. 


Internal man, 6; reiation to spirit- 
ual, 7, nn.1i, 12, 14 


Judgments, last, n.226(1). 
Knowledge, two words for, n.79(1). 


Liberty, specific meaning in S, n.10. 
Love, a ruling, in all, 51, 52, n.118. 
Lust, n.70(2). 


Manifestation, 111, n.249(1). 


Marriage, concept of a marriage 
everywhere, 138, n.261; the mar- 
riage relationship, 138, nn.262, 
263. 


Maximus Homo, 43. 
Memorabilia, n.206(1). 


Memory, a structure, n.107, n.114 
(note). 
Moral, spiritual and natural, 11. 


Natural good, two meanings, 12, 
n.24(1). 


Other world, positive tone of dis- 
cussion, 2, n.25(1). 


Parallelism in Scripture, 80, n.176. 
Personal identity hereafter, 52. 
Phantasy, n.74(4). 

Phenomena other world, 48, 57. 


Philosophy, science and religion on 
creation, 103. 


Proprium, 27, n.63, 39c. 


Rationality, specific meaning in S, 
n.10. 


AN OUTLINE OF NEW-CHURCH TEACHING 


Receptacle of life, 5, n.8 note. 
Reformation, regeneration, 34, 


~ Remains, 32, n.73(2). 


Removal of evil, n.81(2). 

Representative, as distinguished 
from ‘correspondence,’ etc., n.164 
note. 


Revelation, 62. 


Satan (devil), 54. 

Science on creation, and religion, 
103. 

Sensation hereafter, 48, 56e. 

Significative, n.164 and note. 

Sin, 28. 

Spirit an organism and structure, 6, 
D. fehl). 

Spirit, Holy, and Spirit of God, 132, 
n.252 and note 1. 

Spiritual associations, of those here, 
STEELY Fo 

Spiritual life, S’s preference for 
term, 13*, 

Spiritual man, 7, nn.11, 12, 14. 

Spiritual world, organ of thought 
with §, 2, n.6; phenomena, 48, 
57; positive tone of discussion, 2, 
n.25(1); sun, 48, n.105; termin- 
ology, 50, n.108. 


Temptation, peculiar meaning, 
n.84(1). 

Terms in §S, elastically used, n.12 
note, n.9(1), n.13(1); relatively 
to context, n.179(2), n.180(1), 
(2), n.9(1), > TigZlS (tee 
often technical than suppose, 
n.29(1), n.42(1), n.43(1). 

Theophany, 110. 


Truth of faith, n.19(1). 


Understanding and will, n.28(1). 
Uses, n.95(1). 


Will and understanding, n.28(1); 
relation faith and charity, n.28 
notes. 





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